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SARTOR RESARTUS. 



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SARTOR RESARTUS; 



THE 



LIFEAND OPINIONS 



OP 



HERR TEUFELSDROCKH 
IN THREE BOOKS. 



Mein Vermachtniss, wie berrlich weit imd breit ! 

Die Zeit ist mein Vermaclitniss, meiu Acker ist die Zei£. , 



THIRD AMERICAN, FROM THE SECOND LONDON EDITION, 
REVISED AND CORRECTED BY THE AUTHOR. , - 

.V,v?.ry of Cor... 

f -'" 
J. -.; •, ■ ■ 

% 
BOSTON: ^^fW^.hi^^'' 

JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY. 

PHILADELPHIA ; JAMES KAY, JUN. & BROTHER. 

1840. 






rv 






CONTENTS. 



BOOK I. 



Chapter I. Preliminary , 1 

II. Editorial Difficulties 7 

III. Reminiscences 13 

IV. Characteristics 27 

V. The World in Clothes . 34 

VI. Aprons 42 

VII. Miscellaneous-historical 45 

VIII. The World out of Clothes 50 

IX. Adamitism 57 

X. Pure Reason . . 63 

XI. Prospective 70 

BOOK II. 

Chapter I. Genesis 81 

II. Idyllic 91 

III. Pedagogy » 102 

IV. Getting under Way 121 

V. Romance 135 

VI. Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh 151 

VII. The everlasting No 163 

VIII. Centre of Indifference 173 

IX. The everlasting Yea . , 187 

X. Pause 201 



VI CONTENTS. 

' BOOK III. 

Page 

Chapter I. Incident in Modern History 210 

II. Church Clothes 217 

III. Symbols 221 

IV. Helotage 230 

V. The Phoenix 235 

VI. Old Clothes 242 

VII. Organic Filaments 248 

VIII. Natural Supernaturalism 259 

IX. Circumspective 273 

X. The Dandiacal Body 278 

XI. Tailors 294 

XII. Farewell .299 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 



BOOK I. 
CHAPTER I. 

PRELIMINARY. 

Considering our present advanced state of culture, and 
how the Torch of Science has now been brandished and 
borne about, with more or less effect, for five thousand 
years and upwards ; how, in these times especially, not 
only the Torch still burns, and perhaps more fiercely 
than ever, but innumerable Rush-lights, and Sulphur- 
matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing in every 
direction, so that not the smallest cranny or doghole in 
Nature or Art can remain unilluminated, — it might 
strike the reflective mind with some surprise that hither- 
to little or nothing of a fundamental character, whether 
in the way of Philosophy or History, has been written 
on the subject of Clothes. 

Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect : 
Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the Plane- 
tary System, on this scheme, will endure for ever ; 
Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it could 
2 



a SARTOR RESARTUS. 

not have been made on any other scheme. Whereby, 
at least, our nautical Logbooks can be better kept ; and 
water transport of all kinds has grown more commodious. 
Of Geology and Geognosy we know enough : what with 
the labours of our Werners and Buttons, what with the 
ardent genius of their disciples, it has come about that 
[now, to many a Royal Society, the Creation of a World 
lis little more mysterious than the cooking of a Dump- 
ling ; concerning which last, indeed, there have been 
minds to whom the question, Hoiv the Apples loere got 
in, presented difficulties. Why mention our disquisi- 
tions on the Social Contract, on the Standard of Taste, 
on the Migrations of the Herring ? Then, have we not 
a Doctrine of Rent; a Theory of Value ; Philosophies 
of Language, of History, of Pottery, of Apparitions, of 
-Intoxicating Liquors'? Man's whole life and environ- 
ment have been laid open and elucidated ; scarcely a 
fragment or fibre of his Soul, Body, and Possessions, but 
has been probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, and 
scientifically decomposed : our spiritual Faculties, of 
which it appears there are not a hw, have their Stew- 
arts, Cousins, Royer Collards : every cellular, vascular, 
muscular Tissue glories in its Lawrences, Majendies, 
Bichats. 

How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, 
that the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the only real 
Tissue, should have been quite overlooked by Science, 
— the vestural Tissue, namely, of woollen or other cloth ; 
which Man's Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and 
overall ; wherein his whole other Tissues are included 
and screened, his whole Faculties work, his whole Self 
lives, moves, and has its being ? For if, now and then, 



PRELIMINARY. 3 

some straggling broken-winged thinker has cast an owl's 
glance into this obscure region, the most have soared 
over it altogether heedless ; regarding Clothes as a pro- 
perty, not an accident, as quite natural and spontaneous, 
like the leaves of trees, like the plumage of birds. In 
all speculations they have tacitly figured man as a 
Clothed Animal; whereas he is by nature a Naked 
Animal ; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose 
and device, masks himself in Clothes. Shakspeare says, 
we are creatures that look before and after : the more 
surprising that we do not look round a little, and see 
what is passing under our very eyes. 

But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, 
learned, indefatigable, deep-thinking Germany comes to 
our aid. It is, after all, a blessing that, in these revolu- 
tionary times, there should be one country where ab- 
stract Thought can still take shelter ; that while the din 
and frenzy of Catholic Emancipations, and Rotten 
Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris, deafen every French 
and every English ear, the German can stand peaceful 
on his scientific watch-tower; and, to the raging, strug- 
gling multitude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour 
to hour, with preparatory blast of cowhorn, emit his 
Horet ihr Herren und lasseVs Euch sagen ; in other 
words, tell the Universe, which so often forgets that fact, 
what o'clock it really is. Not unfrequently the Germans 
have been blamed for an unprofitable diligence ; as if 
they struck into devious courses, where nothing was to 
be had but the toil of a rough journey ; as if, forsaking 
the gold-mines of Finance, and that political slaughter 
of fat oxen whereby a man himself grows fat, they were 
apt to run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and 



4 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in remote peat- 
bogs. Of that unwise science, which, as our Humorist 
expresses it, 

* By geometric scale, 
Doth take the size of pots of ale,' 

Still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, which 
is seen vigorously enough thrashing mere straw, there 
can nothing defensive be said. In so far as the Germans 
are chargeable with such, let them take the consequence. 
Nevertheless be it remarked, that even a Russian steppe 
has tumuli and gold ornaments ; also many a scene 
that looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, 
will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. 
Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only finger- 
posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable 
barriers, for the mind of man ? It is written, * Many 
shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.' 
Surely the plain rule is. Let each considerate person have 
his way, and see what it will lead to. For not this man 
and that man, but all men make up mankind, and their 
united tasks the task of mankind. How often have we 
seen some such adventurous, and perhaps much-censured 
wanderer light on some outlying, neglected, yet vitally 
momentous province ; the hidden treasures of which he 
first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general eye 
and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was 
completed ; — thereby, in these his seemingly so aimless 
rambles, planting new standards, founding new habitable 
colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient realm of 
Nothingness and Night ? Wise man was he who coun- 
selled that Speculation should have free course, and look 



PRELIMINARY. 5 

fearlessly towards all the thirty-two points of the com- 
pass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed. 

Perhaps it is proof of the stinted condition in which 
pure Science, especially pure moral Science, languishes 
among us English ; and how our mercantile greatness, 
and invaluable Constitution, impressing a political or 
other immediately practical tendency on all English 
culture and endeavour, cramps the free flight of Thought, 
— ^that this, not Philosophy of Clothes, but recognition 
even that we have no such Philosophy, stands here for 
the first time published in our language. What English 
intellect could have chosen such a topic, or by chance 
stumbled on it? But for that same unshackled, and 
even sequestered condition of the German Learned, 
which permits and induces them to fish in all manner of 
waters, with all manner of nets, it seems i)robable 
enough, this abstruse Inquiry might, in spite of the re- 
sults it leads to, have continued dormant for indefinite 
periods. The Editor of these sheets, though otherwise 
boasting himself a man of confirmed speculative habits, 
and perhaps discursive enough, is free to confess, that 
never, till these last months, did the above very plain 
considerations, on our total want of a Philosophy of 
Clothes, occur to him ; and then, by quite foreign sug- 
gestion. By the arrival, namely, of a new Book from 
'Professor Teufelsdrockh of Weissnichtwo ; treating ex- 
pressly of this subject ; and in a style which, whether 
understood or not, could not even by the blindest be 
overlooked. In the present Editor's way of thought, this 
remarkable Treatise, with its Doctrines, whether as 
2* 



6 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

judicially acceded to, or judicially denied, has not re- 
mained without effect. 

* Die Kleider, ihr Werden 2ind Wirken (Clothes, 

* their Origin and Influence) : von Diog. Tevfelsdrdckh, 

* J. U. D. etc. Stillsdaoeigen und Co^^^^- Weissnichtwo, 

* 1831 : 

* Here,' says the Weissnichtwo' soke Anzeiger, * comes 

* a Volume of that extensive, close-printed, close-medi- 

* tated sort, which, be it spoken with pride, is seen only 

* in Germany, perhaps only in Weissnichtwo. Issuing 

* from the hitherto irreproachable Firm of Stillschweigen 

* and Company, with every external furtherance, it is of 

* such internal quality as to set Neglect at defiance.' 

* * * * 4 ^ work,' concludes the well nigh en- 
thusiastic Reviewer, ' interesting alike to the antiquary, 

* the historian, and the philosophic thinker; a master- 

* piece of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and rugged in- 

* dependent Germanism and Philanthropy {derhen 

* Kerndeutschheit und 3Ienschenliebe) ; which will not, 

* assuredly, pass current without opposition in high 

* places ; but must and will exalt the almost new name 

* of Teufelsdrockh to the first ranks of Philosophy, in 

* our German Temple of Honour.' 

Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Professor, 
in this the first blaze of his fame, which however does 
not dazzle him, sends hither a Presentation Copy of his 
Book ; with compliments and encomiums which modesty 
forbids the present Editor to rehearse ; yet without indi- 
cated wish or hope of any kind, except what may be im- 
plied in the concluding phrase : Mochte es (this remark- 
able Treatise) atich im Brittischcn Boden gedeihen ? 



EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 



CHAPTER II. 



EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 



If for a speculative man, * whose seedfield,' in the sub- 
lime words of the Poet, ' is Time,' no conquest is impor- 
tant but that of new Ideas, then might the arrival of 
Professor Teufelsdrockh's Book be marked with chalk 
in the Editor's Calendar. It is indeed an * extensive 
Volume,' of boundless, almost formless contents, a very 
Sea of Thought ; neither calm nor clear, if you will ; 
yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver may dive to his 
utmost depth, and return not only with sea-wreck but 
with true orients. 

Directly on the first perusal, almost on the first delibe- 
rate inspection, it became apparent that here a quite new 
Branch of Philosophy, leading to as yet undescried 
ulterior results, was disclosed ; farther, what seemed 
scarcely less interesting, a quite new human Individu- 
ality, an almost unexampled personal character, that, 
namely, of Professor Teufelsdrockh the Discloser. Of 
both which novelties, as far as might be possible, we re- 
solved to master the significance. But as man is em- 
phatically a Proselytising creature, no sooner was such 
mastery even fairly attempted, than the new question 
arose : How might this acquired good be imparted to 
others, perhaps in equal need thereof; how could the 



8 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Philosophy of Clothes and the Author of such Philosophy 
be brought home, in any measure, to the business and 
bosoms of our own English nation ? For if new-got 
gold is said to burn the pockets till it be cast forth into 
circulation, much more may new Truth. 

Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first thought 
naturally was to publish Article after Article on this re- 
markable Volume, in such widely-circulating Critical 
Journals as the Editor might stand connected with, or by 
money or love procure access to. But, on the other hand, 
was it not clear that such matter as must here be revealed 
and treated of might endanger the circulation of any 
Journal extant ? If, indeed, the whole parties of the 
State could have been abolished. Whig, Tory, and Radi- 
cal, embracing in discrepant union ; and the whole 
Journals of the Nation could have been jumbled into one 
Journal, and the Philosophy of Clothes poured forth 
in incessant torrents therefrom, the attempt had seemed 
possible. But, alas, what vehicle of that sort have we, 
except Eraser's Magazine ? A vehicle all strewed 
(figuratively speaking) with the maddest Waterloo- 
Crackers, exploding distractively and destructively, 
wheresoever the mystified passenger stands or sits ; nay, 
in any case, understood to be, of late years, a vehicle full 
to overflowing, and inexorably shut ! Besides, to state 
the Philosophy of Clothes without the Philosopher, the 
ideas of Teufelsdrockh without something of his person- 
ality, was it not to insure both of entire misapprehension ? 
Now for Biography, had it been otherwise admissible, 
there were no adequate documents, no hope of obtaining 
such, but rather, owing to circumstances, a special de- 
spair. Thus did the Editor see himself, for the while, 



EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. if 

shut out from all public utterance of these extraordinary 
Doctrines, and constrained to revolve them, not without 
disquietude, in the dark depths of his own mind. 

So had it lasted for some months ; and now the 
Volume on Clothes, read and again read, ,was in several 
points becoming lucid and lucent; the personality of its 
Author more and more surprising, but, in spite of all that 
memory and conjecture could do, more and more enig- 
matic ; whereby the old disquietude seemed fast settling 
into fixed discontent, — when altogether unexpectedly 
arrives a Letter from Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke, our 
Professor's chief friend and associate in Weissnichtwo, 
with whom we had not previously corresponded. The 
Hofrath, after much quite extraneous matter, began di- 
lating largely on the ' agitation and attention' which the 
Philosophy of Clothes was exciting in its own German 
Republic of Letters ; on the deep significance and ten- 
dency of his Friend's Volume ; and then, at length, with 
great circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of con- 
veying ' some knowledge of it, and of him, to England, 
and through England to the distant West :' a Work on 
Professor Teufelsdrockh * were undoubtedly welcome to 
' the Family, the National ^ or any other of those patriotic 
' Libraries, at present the glory of British Literature ;' 
might work revolutions in Thouo^ht : and so forth : — in 
conclusion, intimating not obscurely, that should the 
present Editor feel disposed to undertake a Biography of 
Teufelsdrockh, he, Hofrath Heuschrecke, had it in his 
power to furnish the requisite Documents. 

As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long eva- 
porating, but would not crystallise, instantly when the 
wire or other fixed substance is introduced, crystallisa- 



10 SARTOR RE8ARTUS. 

tion commences, and rapidly proceeds till the whole is 
finished, so was it with the Editor's mind and this offer 
of Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void solution and 
discontinuity ; like united itself with like in definite ar- 
rangement : and soon either in actual vision and posses- 
sion, or in fixed reasonable hope, the image of the whole 
Enterprise had shaped itself, so to speak, into a solid 
mass. Cautiously yet courageously, through the two- 
penny post, application to the famed redoubtable Oliver 
YoRKE was now made : an interview, interviews with 
that singular man have taken place ; with more of assur- 
ance on our side, with less of satire (at least of open 
satire) on his, than we anticipated ; — for the rest, with 
such issue as is now visible. As to those same ' patriotic 
Libraries,^ the Hofrath's counsel could only be viewed 
with silent amazement; but with his offer of Documents 
we joyfully and almost instantaneously closed. Thus, 
too, in the sure expectation of these, we already see our 
task begun; and this our Sartor Resartus, which is 
properly a ' Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh,' 
hourly advancing. 

Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which we have such 
title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting to say 
more. Let the British reader study and enjoy, m sim- 
plicity of heart, what is here presented him, and with 
whatever metaphysical acumen, and talent for Medita- 
tion he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep a free, 
open sense ; cleared from the mists of Prejudice, above 
all from the paralysis of Cant ; and directed rather to the 
Book itself than to the Editor of the Book. Who or 
what such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, and 



EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 



11 



even insignificant :* it is a Voice publishing tidings of 
the Philosophy of Clothes ; undoubtedly a Spirit address- 
ing Spirits : whoso hath ears let him hear. 

On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to give 
virarning : namely, that he is animated with a true 
though perhaps a feeble attachment to the Institutions of 
our Ancestors ; and minded to defend these, according 
to ability, at all hazards ; nay, it was partly with a view 
to such defence that he engaged in this undertaking. To 
stem, or if that be impossible, profitably to divert the 
current of Innovation, such a Volume as Teufelsdrockh's, 
if cunningly planted down, were no despicable pile, or 
floodgate, in the Logical wear. 

For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that any per- 
sonal connexion of ours with Teufelsdrockh, Heaschrecke, 
or this Philosophy of Clothes, can pervert our judgment, 
or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate. Powerless, we 
venture to promise, are those private Compliments them- 
selves. Grateful they may well be; as generous illu- 
sions of friendship ; as fair mementos of bygone unions, 
of those nights and suppers of the gods, when lapped in 
the symphonies and harmonies of Philosophic Eloquence, 
though with baser accompaniments, the present Editor 
revelled in that feast of reason, never since vouchsafed 
him in so full measure ! But what then ? Amicus Plato, 
magis arnica Veritas; Teufelsdrockh is our friend, 
Truth is our divinity. In our historical and critical ca- 
pacity, we hope, we are strangers to all the world ; have 

P 
* With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask, or 
muffler; and, we have reason to think, under a feigned name ! — 
O. Y. 



12 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

feud or favour with no one, — save indeed the Devil, with 
whom as with the Prince of Lies and Darkness we do at 
all times wage internecine war. This assurance, at an 
epoch when Puffery and Q,uackery have reached a height 
unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even English 
Editors, like Chinese Shopkeepers, must write on their 
door-lintels, No cheating herCf — we thought it good to 
premise. 



REMINISCENCES. 13 



CHAPTER III. 



REMINISCENCES. 



To the Author's private circle the appearance of this 
sincfular Work on Clothes must have occasioned little 
less surprise than it has to the rest of the world. For 
ourselves, at least, few things have been more unex- 
pected. Professor Teufelsdrockh, at the period of our 
acquaintance with him, seemed to lead a quite still and 
self-contained life : a man devoted to the higher Phi- 
losophies, indeed : yet more likely, if he published at all, 
to publish a Refutation of Hegel and Bardili, both of 
whom, strangely enough, he included under a common 
ban ; than to descend, as he has here done, into the 
angry noisy Forum, with an Argument that cannot but 
exasperate and divide. Not, that we can remember, was 
the Philosophy of Clothes once touched upon between 
us, Ifthrough the high, silent, meditative Transcenden- 
talism of our Friend we detected any practical tendency 
whatever, it was at most Political, and towards a cer- 
tain prospective, and for the present quite speculative, 
Radicalism ; as indeed some correspondence, on his part, 
with Herr Oken of Jena was now and then suspected ; 
though his special contributions to the Isis could never 
be more than surmised at. But, at all events, nothing 
Moral, still less any thing Didactico-Religious, was looked 
for from him. 

3 



14 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our 
hearing ; which indeed, with the Night they were uttered 
in, are to be forever remembered. Lifting his huge 
tumbler of GuTcguk* and for a moment lowering his to- 
bacco-pipe, he stood up in full coffee-house (it was Zum 
Grunen Gcmse, the largest in Weissnichtwo, where all 
the Virtuosity, and nearly all the Intellect, of the place 
assembled of an evening) ; and there, with low, soul- 
stirring tone, and the look truly of an angel, though 
whether of a white or of a black one might be dubious, 
proposed this toast : JDie Soche der Armen in Gottes 
und Teufels Namen (The Cause of the Poor in 

Heaven's name and 's) 1 One full shout, breaking 

the leaden silence ; then a gurgle of innumerable empty- 
ing bumpers, again followed by universal cheering, re- 
turned him loud acclaim. It was the finale of the night : 
resuming their pipes ; in the highest enthusiasm, amid 
volumes of tobacco-smoke ; triumphant, cloudcapt with- 
out and within, the assembly broke up, each to his 
thoughtful pillow. Bleibt dock ein exhter Spass-und 
Galgen-vogel, said several ; meaning thereby that, one 
day, he would probably be hanged for his democratic 
sentiments. Wo steckt der Schalk ? added they, looking 
round : but Teufelsdrockh had retired by private alleys, 
and the Compiler of these pages beheld him no more. 

In such scenes has it been our lot to live with this 
Philosopher, such estimate to form of his purposes and 
powers. And yet, thou brave Teufelsdrockh, who could 
tell what lurked in thee? Under those thick locks of 
thine, so long and lank, overlapping roof-wise the gravest 

* Gukguk is unhappily onjy an academical — beer. 



REMINISCENCES. 



15 



face we ever in this world saw, there dwelt a most busy 
brain. In thy eyes, too, deep under their shaggy brows, 
and looking out so stiil and dreamy, have we not noticed 
gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic fire, and half 
fancied that their stillness was but the rest of infinite 
motion, the sleey of a spinning top? Thy little figure, 
there as in loose, ill-brushed, threadbare habiliments, 
thou sattest, amid litter and lumber, whole days, to 
' think and smoke tobacco,' held in it a mighty heart. 
The secrets of man's Life were laid open to thee ; thou 
sawest into the mystery of the Universe, farther than 
another ; thou hadst in petto thy remarkable Volume on 
Clothes. Nay, was there not in that clear logically- 
founded Transcendentalism of thine ; still more, in thy 
meek, silent, deepseated Sansculottism, combined with 
a true princely Courtesy of inward nature, the visible ru- 
diments of such speculation 1 But great men are too 
often unknown, or what is worse, misknown. Already, 
when we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy remarkable 
Volume lay on the loom ; and, silently, mysterious 
shuttles were putting in the woof! 

How the Hofrath Heuschrecke is to furnish bio- 
graphical data, in this case, may be a curious question ; 
the answer of which, however, is happily not our concern, 
but his. To us it appeared, after repeated trial, that in 
Weissnichtwo, from the archives or memories of the best- 
informed classes, no Biography of Teufelsdrockh was to 
be gathered ; not so much as a false one. He was a 
Stranger there, wafted thither by what is called the course 
of circumstances; concerning whose parentage, birth- 
place, prospects, or pursuits, Curiosity had indeed made 
inquiries, but satisfied herself with the most indistinct 



16 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

replies. For himself, he was a man so still and alto- 
gether unparticipating, that to question him even afar 
off on such particulars was a thing of more than usual 
delicacy : hesides, in his sly way, he had ever some quaint 
turn, not without its satirical edge, wherewith to divert 
such intrusions, and deter you from the like. Wits 
spoke of him secretly as if he were a kind of Melchizedek, 
without father or mother of any kind ; sometimes, with 
reference to his great historic and statistic knowledge, 
and the vivid way he had of expressing himself like an 
eye-witness of distant transactions and scenes, they 
called him the Ewige Jude, Everlasting, or as we say, 
Wandering Jew. 

To the most, indeed, he had become not so much a 
Man as a Thing ; which thing doubtless they were ac- 
customed to see, and with satisfaction ; but no more 
thought of accounting for than for the fabrication of their 
daily Allgemeine Zeitung^ or the domestic habits of the 
Sun. Both were there and welcome ; the world enjoyed 
what good was in them, and thought no more of the 
matter. The man Teufelsdrockh passed and repassed, 
in his little circle, as one of those originals and nonde- 
scripts, more frequent in German Universities than else- 
where ; of whom, though you see them alive, and feel 
certain enough that they must have a History, no History 
seems to be discoverable ; or only such as men give of 
mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins : That they have 
been created by unknown agencies, are in a state of 
gradual decay, and for the present reflect light and 
resist pressure; that is, are visible and tangible ob- 
jects in this phantasm world, where so much other 
mystery is. 



REMINISCENCES. 17 

It was to be remarked that though, by title and di- 
ploma, Professor der Allerley-Wissenschaft, or as we 
should say in English, * Professor of Things in General,' 
he had never delivered any Course ; perhaps never been 
incited thereto by any public furtherance or requisition. 
To all appearance, the enlightened Government of 
Weissnichtwo, in founding their New University, 
imagined they had done enough, if in times like ours,' 
as the half-official Program expressed it, ' when all 

* things are, rapidly or slowly, resolving themselves into 
' Chaos, a Professorship of this kind had been established ; 
' whereby, as occasion called, the task of bodying some- 

* what forth again from such Chaos might be, even slightly, 
' facilitated.' That actual Lectures should be held, and 
Public Classes for the ' Science of Things in General,' 
they doubtless considered premature ; on which ground 
too they had only established the Professorship, nowise 
endowed it ; so that Teufelsdrockh, ' recommended by 
the highest Names,' had been promoted thereby to a 
Name merely. 

Great, among the more enlightened classes, was the 
admiration of this new Professorship : how an enlightened 
Government had seen into the Want of the Age [Zeithe' 
durfniss) ; how at length, instead of Denial and Destruc- 
tion, we were to have a science of Affirmation and Re- 
construction ; and Germany and Weissnichtwo were where 
they should be, in the vanguard of the world. Consider- 
able also was the wonder at the new Professor, dropt 
opportunely enough into the nascent University ; so able 
to lecture, should occasion call ; so ready to hold his 
peace for indefinite periods, should an enlightened Gov- 
ernment consider that occasion did not call. But such 
3* 



18 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

admiration and such wonder, being followed by no act to 
keep them living, could last only nine days; and, long 
before our visit to that scene, had quite died away. The 
more cunning heads thought it was all an expiring clutch 
at popularity, on the part of a Minister, whom domestic 
embarrassments, court intrigues, old age, and dropsy 
soon afterwards finally drove from the helm. 

As for Teufelsdrockh, except by his nightly appear- 
ances at the Griinen Ganse, Weissnichtwo saw little of 
him, felt little of him. Here, over his tumbler of Guk- 
guk, he sat reading Journals ; sometimes contemplatively 
looking into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, without other 
visible employment : always,. from his mild ways, an agree- 
able phenomenon there ; more especially when he opened 
his lips for speech ; on which occasions the whole Coffee- 
house would hush itself into silence, as if sure to hear 
something noteworthy. Nay, perhaps to hear a whole 
series and river of the most memorable utterances ; such 
as, when once thawed, he would for hours indulge in, 
with fit audience : and the more memorable, as issuing 
from a head apparently not more interested in them, not 
more conscious of them, than is the sculptured stone 
head of some public Fountain, which through its brass 
mouth-tube emits water to the worthy and the unworthy ; 
careless whether it be for cooking victuals or quenching 
conflagrations ; indeed, maintains the same earnest 
assiduous look, whether any water be flowing or not. 

To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthusiastic 
Englishman, however unworthy, Teufelsdrockh opened 
himself perhaps more than to the most. Pity only that 
we could not then half guess his importance, and scru- 
tinise him with due power of vision 1 We enjoyed, 



REMINISCENCES. J 9 

what not three men in Weissnichtwo could boast of, a 
certain degree of access to the Professor's private domi- 
cile. It was the attic floor of the highest house in the 
Wahngasse ; and might truly be called the pinnacle of 
Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the contiguous 
roofs, themselves rising from elevated ground. More- 
over, with its windows, it looked towards all the four 
Orte, or as the Scotch say, and we ought to say, Airts : 
the Sitting-room itself commanded three ; another came 
to view in the Sc/ilqfgemach (Bed-room) at the opposite 
end : to say nothing of the Kitchen, which offered two, 
as it were, dvplicates , and showing nothing new. So 
that it was in fact the speculum or watch-tower of Teuf- 
elsdrockh ; wherefrom, sitting at ease, he might see the 
whole life-circulation of that considerable City ; the 
streets and lanes of which, with all their doing and 
driving ( Thun und Treiben), were for the most part 
visible there. 

" I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," 

have we heard him say, " and witness their wax-laying 

' and honey-making, and poison-brewing, and choking 

* by sulphur. From the Palace esplanade, where music 
' plays while Serene Highness is pleased to eat his vic- 

* tuals, down the low lane, where in her door-sill the 

* aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to feel 

* the afternoon sun, 1 see it all ; for, except the Schloss- 

* kirche weathercock, no biped stands so high. Couriers 

* arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and Sorrow 
' bagged up in pouches of leather : there, topladen., and 
' with four swift horses, rolls in the country Baron and 
' his household ; here, on timber leg, the lamed Soldier 
' hops painfully along, begging alms : a thousand car- 



20 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

*' riages, and wains, and cars, come tumbling in with 
** Food, with young Rusticity, and other Raw Produce, 
" inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out again with 
•' Produce manufactured. That living flood, pouring 
•*' through these streets, of all qualities and ages, knowest 
" thou whence it is coming, whither it is going ? Aus der 
*' Eivigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin : From Eternity, on- 
" wards to Eternity ! These are Apparitions : what else 1 
" Are they not Souls rendered visible; in Bodies, that 
" took shape and will lose it ; melting into air? Their 
" solid pavement is a Picture of the Sense ; they walk 
" on the bosom of Nothing, blank Time is behind them 
** and before thenj. Or fanciest thou, the red and yellow 
" Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on its heels, and 
** feather in its crown, is but of To-day, without a Yester- 
*' day or a To-morrow ; and had not rather its Ancestor 
** alive when Hengst and Horsa overran thy Island ? 
" Friend, thou seest here a living link in that Tissue of 
" History, which inweaves all Being : watch well, or it 
" will be past thee, and seen no more." 

*' Ach, mein Lieber ! " said he once, at midnight, when 
we had returned from the Coffee-house in rather earnest 
talk, *' it is a true sublimity to dwell here. These fringes 
*' of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thou- 
" sand-fold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient 
" reign of Night, what thinks Bootes of them, as he 
** leads his Hunting Dogs over the Zenith in their leash 
"of sidereal fire? That stifled hum of Midnight, when 
" Traffic has lain down to rest ; and the chariot-wheels 
** of Vanity, still rolling here and there through distant 
" streets, are bearing her to Halls roofed in, and lighted 
** to the due pitch for her ; and only Vice and Misery, to 



REMINISCENCES. 21 

" prowl or to moan like nightbirds, are abroad : that 
** hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet slumber of sick 
** Life, is heard in Heaven ! Oh, under that hideous 
" coverlet of vapours, and putrefactions, and unirnagina- 
" ble gases, what a Fermenting-vat lies simmering and 
"hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are there ; men 
" are dying there, men are being born ; men are pray- 
" ing, — on the other side of a brick partition, men are 
" cursing; and around them all is the vast, void Night. 
" The proud Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, 
*' or reposes within damask curtains ; Wretchedness 
" cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hunger-stricken 
" into his lair of straw : in obscure cellars, Rouge-et-Noir 
" languidly emits its voice-of-destiny to haggard hungry 
" Villains ; while Councillors of State sit plotting, and 
'* playing their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are 
*' Men. The Lover whisoers his mistress that the coach 
** is ready ; and she, full of hope and fear, glides down, 
" to fly with him over the borders : the Thief, still more 
*' silently, sets-to his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in 
" wait till the watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay 
** mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are 
*' full of light and music and high swelling hearts ; but, 
" in the Condemned Cells, the pulse of life beats tre- 
" mulous and faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through 
" the darkness, which is around and within, for the light 
*' of a stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on 
" the morrow : comes no hammering from the Rahen- 
^^ stein? — their gallows must even now be o' building. 
" Upwards of five hundred thousand two-legged animals 
" without feathers lie round us, in horizontal position ; 
" their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest 



22 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

" dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers 
" in his rank dens of shame ; and the Mother, with 
*' streaming hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, 
" whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten. — 
•* All these heaped and huddled together, with nothing 
" but a little carpentry and masonry between them ; — 
" crammed in, like salted fish, in their barrel ; — or wel- 
" tering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed 
" Vipers, each struggling to get its head above the 
*' others : such work goes on under that smoke-counter- 
" pane ! — But I, mein Werther, sit above it all ; I am 
*' alone with the Stars." 

We looked in his face to see whether, in the utterance 
of such extraordinary Night-thoughts, no feeling might 
be traced there ; but with the light we had, which indeed 
was only a single tallow-light, and far enough from the 
window, nothing save that old calmness and fixedness 
was visible. 

These were the Professor's talking seasons : most com- 
monly he spoke in mere monosyllables, or sat altogether 
silent, and smoked ; while the visitor had liberty either 
to say what he listed, receiving for answer an occasional 
grunt ; or to look round for a space, and then take him- 
self away. It was a strange apartment; full of books 
and tattered papers, and miscellaneous shreds of all con- 
ceivable substances, ' united in a common element of 
dust.' Books lay on tables, and below tables ; here 
fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a torn handker- 
chief, or nightcap hastily thrown aside: ink-bottles al- 
ternated with bread crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, 
Periodical Literature, and Blucher Boots. Old Leischen 
(Lisekin, 'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove- 



REMINISCENCES. 23 

lighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errand-maid, and 
general lion's-provider, and for the rest a very orderly 
creature, had no sovereign authority in this last citadel of 
Teufelsdrockh ; only some once in the month, she half- 
forcibly made her way thither, with broom and duster, 
and (Teufelsdrockh hastily saving his manuscripts) 
effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of such lumber 
as was not Literary. These were her Erdbebungen 
(Earthquakes), which Teufelsdrockh dreaded worse than 
the pestilence ; nevertheless, to such length he had been 
forced to comply. Glad would he have been to sit here 
philosophising for ever, or till the litter, by accumulation, 
drove him out of doors : but Leischen was his right-arm, 
and spoon, and necessary of life, and would not be flatly 
gainsayed. We can still remember the anciei|t woman ; 
so silent that some thought her dumb ; deaf also you 
would often have supposed her ; for Teufelsdrockh and 
Teufelsdrockh only would she serve or give heed to ; and 
with him she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs ; 
if it were not rather by some secret divination that she 
guessed all his wants, and supplied them. Assiduous 
old dame ! she scoured, and sorted, and swept in her 
kitchen, with the least possible violence to the ear ; yet 
all was tight and right there: hot and black came the 
coflfee ever at the due moment; and the speechless 
Leischen herself looked out on you, from under her clean 
white coif with its lappets, through her clean withered 
face and wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence, 
almost of benevolence. 

Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance 
hither : the only one we ever saw there, ourselves ex- 
cepted, was the Hofrath Heuschrecke, already known, by 



24 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

name and expectation, to the readers of these pages. 
To us, at that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of 
those purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean-brushed, pa- 
cific individuals, perhaps sufficiently distinguished in 
society by this fact, that, in dry weather or in wet, ' they 
never appear without their umbrella.' Had we not 
known with what ' little wisdom' the world is governed ; 
and how, in Germany as elsewhere, the ninety and nine 
Public Men can for the most part be but mute train- 
bearers to the hundredth, perhaps but stalking horses 
and willing or unwilling dupes, — it might have seemed 
wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a 
Rath, or Councillor, and Counsellor, even in Weiss- 
nichtwo. What counsel to any man, or to any woman, 
could this particular Hofrath give ; in whose loose, 
zigzag figure ; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking 
to and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation, — you traced 
rather confusion worse confounded ; at most. Timidity 
and physical Cold ? Some indeed said withal, he was 
* the very Spirit of Love embodied :' blue earnest eyes, 
full of sadness and kindness ; purse ever open, and so 
forth ; the whole of which, we shall now hope for many 
reasons, was not quite groundless. Nevertheless, friend 
Teufelsdrockh's outline, who indeed handled the burin 
like few in these cases, was probably the best: Er hat 
Gemuth unci Geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, doch 
ohne Organ, ohne SchicJcsals-gunst ; ist gegenwdrtig 
aber halb-zerruttet , halb-erstarrt, " He has heart 
*' and talent, at least has had such, yet without fit 
** mode of utterance, or favour of Fortune ; and so is 
'* now half-cracked, half-congealed." — What the Hofrath 
shall think of this when he sees it, readers may wonder : 



REMINISCENCES. 25 

we, safe in the stronghold of Historical Fidelity, are 
careless. 

The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of 
Teufelsdrockh, which indeed was also by far the most 
decisive feature of Heuschrecke himself. We are en- 
abled to assert that he hung on the Professor with the 
fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps 
with the like return ; for Teufelsdrockh treated his gaunt 
admirer with little outward regard, as some half-rational 
or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out 
of gratitude and by habit. On the other hand, it was 
curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a 
sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath, being the elder, 
richer, and as he fondly imagined far more practically 
influential of the two, looked and tended on his little 
Sage, whom he seemed to consider as a living oracle. 
Let but Teufelsdrockh open his mouth, Heuschrecke's 
also unpuckered itself into a free doorway, besides his 
being all eye and all ear, so that nothing might be lost : 
and then, at every pause in the harangue, he gurgled out 
his pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of 
laughter took some time to get in motion, and seemed 
crank and slack), or else his twanging, nasal Bravo ! Das 
gloub' ich ; in either case by way of heartiest approval. 
In short, if Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of which, ex- 
cept perhaps in his self-seclusion, and god-like Indiffer- 
ence, there was no symptom, then might Heuschrecke pass 
for his chief Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could 
knead and publish was other than medicinal and sacred. 

In such environment, social, domestic, physical, did 
Teufelsdrockh, at the time of our acquaintance, and 
most likely does he still, live and meditate. Here, 
4 



26 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

perched up in his high Wahngasse watchtower, and 
often, in solitude, outwatching the Bear, it was that the 
indomitable Inquirer fought all his battles with Dulness 
and Darkness ; here, in all probability, that he wrote this 
surprising Volume on Clothes. Additional particulars : 
of his age, which was of that standing middle sort you 
could only guess at ; of his wide surtout : the color of 
his trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed steeple-hat, 
and so forth, we might report, but do not. The Wisest 
truly is, in these times, the Greatest ; so that an en- 
lightened curiosity, leaving Kings and such like to rest 
very much on their own basis, turns more and more to 
the Philosophic Class: nevertheless, what reader expects 
that, with all our writing and reporting, Teufelsdrockh 
could be brought home to him, till once the Documents 
arrive 1 His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily Presence, are 
as yet hidden from us, or matter only of faint conjecture. 
But on the other hand, does not his Soul lie enclosed in 
this remarkable Volume, much more truly than Pedro 
Garcia's did in the buried Bag of Doubloons 1 To the 
soul of Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, to his opinions namely 
on the * Origin and Influence of Clothes,' we for the 
present gladly return. 



CHARACTERISTICS. ' 27 



CHAPTER IV. 



CHARACTERISTICS. 



It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this 
Work on Clothes entirely contents us ; that it is not, like 
all works of Genius, like the very Sun, which, though 
the highest published Creation, or work of Genius, has 
nevertheless black spots and troubled nebulosities amid 
its effulgence, — a mixture of insight, inspiration, with 
dulness, double vision, and even utter blindness. 

Without committinor ourselves to those enthusiastic 
praises and prophesyings of the Weissnichtwo'sche An- 
zeiger, we admitted that the Book had in a high degree 
excited us to self-activity, which is the best effect of any 
book ; that it had even operated changes in our way of 
thought ; nay, that it promised to prove, as it were, the 
opening of a new mine-shaft, v/herein the whole world 
of Speculation might henceforth dig to unknown depths. 
More specially it may now be declared that Professor 
Teufelsdrockh's acquirements, patience of research, 
philosophic and even poetic vigour, are here made in- 
disputably manifest; and unhappily no less his prolixity 
and tortuosity and manifold ineptitude ; that, on the 
whole, as in opening new mine-shafts is not unreasonable, 
there is much rubbish in his Book, though likewise 
specimens of almost invaluable ore. A paramount popu- 
larity in England we cannot promise him. Apart from 
the choice of such a topic as Clothes, too often the 



28 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

manner of treating it betokens in the Author a rusticity 
and academic seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable in 
a German, but fatal to his success with our public. 

Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to have seen 
little, or has mostly forgotten what he saw. He speaks 
out with a strange plainness ; calls many things by their 
mere dictionary names. To him the Upholsterer is no 
Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, were it 
never so begilt and overhung : * a whole immensity of 
' Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and or-moulu,' 
as he himself expresses it, 'cannot hide from me that 

* such Drawing-room is simply a section of Infinite 

* Space, where so many God-created Souls do for the 

* time meet together.' To Teufelsdrockh the highest 
Duchess is respectable, is venerable ; but nowise for her 
pearl-bracelets, and Malines laces : in his eyes, the star 
of a Lord is little less and little more than the broad 
button of Birmingham spelter in a Clown's smock ; 

* each is an implement,' he says, * in its kind ; a tag 

* for hooking-together ; and, for the rest, was dug from 

* the earth, and hammered on a stithy before smith's 

* fingers.' Thus does the Professor look in men's faces 
with a strange impartiality, a strange scientific freedom ; 
like a man unversed in the higher circles, like a man 
dropped thither from the Moon. Rightly considered, it 
is in this peculiarity, running through his whole system 
of thought, that all these short-comings, over-shootings, 
and multiform perversities, take rise : if indeed they have 
not a second source, also natural enough, in his Trans- 
cendental Philosophies, and humour of looking at all 
Matter and Material things as Spirit ; whereby truly his 
case were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable. 

To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of which class 



CHARACTERISTICS. 29 

it is firmly believed there are individuals yet extant, we 
can safely recommend the Work : nay, who knows but 
among the fashionable ranks too, if it be true, as Teu- 
felsdrockh maintains, that ' within the most starched 
' cravat there passes a windpipe and wesand, and under 
* the thickliest embroidered waistcoat beats a heart,' — 
the force of that rapt earnestness may be felt, and here 
and there an arrow of the soul pierce through. In our 
wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Baptist living on 
locusts and wild honey, there is an untutored energy, a 
silent as it were unconscious strength, which, except in 
the higher walks of Literature, must be rare. Many a 
deep glance, and often with unspeakable precision, has 
he cast into mvsterious Nature, and the still more 
mysterious Life of Man. Wonderful it is with what 
cutting words, now and then, he severs asunder the 
confusion ; sheers down, were it furlongs deep, into the 
true centre of the matter ; and there not only hits the 
nail on the head, but with crushing force smites it home, 
and buries it. — On the other hand, let us be free to 
admit, he is the most unequal writer breathing. Often 
after some such feat, he will play truant for long pages, 
and go dawdling and dreaming, and mumbling and 
maundering the merest commonplaces, as if he were 
asleep with eyes open, which indeed he is. 

Of his boundless Learning, and how all reading and 
literature in most known tongues, from SanconiatJion to 
Dr. Lingard, from your Oriental Shasters, and l^almuds, 
and Korans with Cassini's Siamese Tables^ and Laplace's 
Mecanique Celeste, down to . Robinson Crusoe and the 
Belfast Town and Country Almanack, are familiar to 

him, — we shall say nothing : for unexampled as it is 

4* 



30 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

with US, to the Germans such universality of study passes 
without wonder, as a thing commendable, indeed, but 
natural, indispensable, and there of course. A man that 
devotes his life to learning, shall he not be learned 1 

In respect of style our Author manifests the same 
genial capability, marred too often by the same rudeness, 
inequality, and apparent want of intercourse with the 
higher classes. Occasionally, as above hinted, we find 
consummate vigour, a true inspiration : his burning 
Thoughts step forth in fit burning Words, like so many 
full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame and splendour 
from Jove's head ; a rich, idiomatic diction, picturesque 
allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns ; 
all the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, wedded 
to the clearest Intellect, alternate in beautiful vicissitude. 
Were it not that sheer sleeping and soporific passages ; 
circumlocutions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting 
jargon, so often intervene ! On the whole. Professor 
Teufelsdrockh is not a cultivated writer. Of his sen- 
tences perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight 
on their legs ; the remainder are in quite angular atti- 
tudes, buttressed up by props (of parentheses and 
dashes), and ever, with this or the other tagrag hanging 
from them ; a few even sprawl out helplessly on all sides, 
quite broken-backed and dismembered. Nevertheless, 
in almost his very worst moods, there lies in him a 
singular attraction. A wild tone pervades the whole 
utterance of the man, like its keynote and regulator ; 
now screwing itself aloft as into the Song of Spirits, or 
else the shrill mockery of Fiends ; now sinking in 
cadences, not without melodious heartiness, though 
sometimes abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when 



CHARACTERISTICS. 31 

we hear it only as a monotonous hum ; of which hum 
the true character is extremely difficult to fix. Up to 
this hour we have never fully satisfied ourselves whether 
it is a tone and hum of real Humour, which we reckon 
among the very highest qualities of genius, or some echo 
of mere Insanity and Inanity, which doubtless ranks 
below the very lowest. 

Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal 
intercourse, do we still lie with regard to the Professor's 
moral feeling. Gleams of an ethereal Love burst forth 
from him, soft waiiings of infinite Pity ; he could clasp 
the whole Universe into his bosom, and keep it warm ; it 
seems as if under that rude exterior there dwelt a very 
seraph. Then again he is so sly and still, so imperturbably 
saturnine ; shows such indiflference, malign coolness to- 
wards all that men strive after ; and ever with some half- 
visible wrinkle of a bitter sardonic humour, if indeed it 
be not mere stolid callousness, — that you look on him 
almost with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephis- 
topheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial 
Round, after all, were but some huge foolish Whirligig, 
where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and 
stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in 
which only children could take interest. His look, as 
we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen : yet it 
is not of that cast-iron gravity frequent enough among 
our own Chancery suitors ; but rather the gravity as of 
some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps the 
crater of an extinct volcano ; into whose black deeps 
you fear to gaze : those eyes, those lights that sparkle in 
it, may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly Stars, but 
perhaps also glances from the region of Nether Fire 1 



32 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether 
enigmatic nature, this of Teufelsdrockh ! Here, how- 
ever, we gladly recall to mind that once we saw him 
laugh ; once only, perhaps it was the first and last time 
in his life ; but then such a peal of laughter, enough to 
have awakened the Seven Sleepers ! It was of Jean 
Paul's doing: some single billow in that vast World- 
Mahlstrom of Humour, with its Heaven-kissing corus- 
cations, which is now, alas, all congealed in the frost of 
Death ! The large-bodied Poet and the small, both 
large enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously to- 
gether, the present Editor being privileged to listen ; 
and now Paul, in his serious way, was giving one of 
those inimitable * Extra-harangues ;' and, as it chanced, 
On the Proposal for a Cast-metal King : gradually a 
light kindled in our Professor's eyes and face, a beam- 
ing, mantling, loveliest light; through those murky 
features, a radiant ever-young Apollo looked ; and he 
burst forth like the neighing of all Tattersall's, — tears 
streaming down his cheeks, pipe held aloft, foot clutched 
into the air, — loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable; a 
laugh not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the 
whole man from head to heel. The present Editor, who 
laughed indeed, yet with measure, began to fear all was 
not right : however, Teufelsdrockh composed himself, 
and sank into his old stillness; on his inscrutable coun- 
tenance there was, if anything, a slight look of shame ; 
and Richter himself could not rouse him again. Readers 
who have any tincture of Psychology know how much is 
to be inferred from this; and that no man who has once 
heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaim- 
ably bad. How much lies in Laughter : the cipher-key, 



4 

A 



CSARACTERISTICS. 33 

( wherewith we decipher the whole man ! Some men ''' 
V wear an everlasting barren simper ; in the smile of others 
lies a cold glitter as of ice : the fewest are able to laugh, 
what can be called laughing, but only sniff and titter 
and snigger from the throat outwards ; or at best, pro- 
duce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as if they were 
laughing through wool : of none such comes good. The 
man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, 
stratagems, and spoils ; but his whole life is already a 
treas on and a stratagem. 

Considered as an Author, Herr Teufelsdrockh has one 
scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst : an almost 
total want of arrangement. In this remarkable Volume, 
it is true, his adherence to the mere course of Time 
produces, through the Narrative portions, a certain shew 
of outward method ; but of true logical method and 
sequence there is too little. Apart from its multifarious 
sections and subdivisions, the Work naturally falls into 
two Parts ; a Historical-Descriptive, and a Philosophical- 
Speculative : but falls, unhappily, by no firm line of 
demarcation ; in that labyrinthic combination, each 
Part overlaps, and indents, and indeed runs quite 
through the other. Many sections are of a debatable 
rubric, or even quite nondescript and unnameable ; 
whereby the Book not only loses in accessibility, but 
too often distresses us like some mad banquet, wherein 
all courses had been confounded, and fish and flesh, 
soup and solid, oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and 
French mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen or 
trough, and the hungry Public invited to help itself. 
To bring what order we can out of this Chaos shall be 
part of our endeavour. 



34 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 



* As Montesquieu wrote a Spirit of Lmvs,' observes our 
Professor, * so could I write a Spirit of Clothes ; thus, 
' witli an Esprit des Loix, properly an Esprit de Cou- 
' tumes, we should have an Esprit de Costumes. For 

* neither in tailoring nor in legislating does man proceed 

* by mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided on by 

* mysterious operations of the mind. In all his Modes 

* and habilatory endeavours an Architectural Idea will 

* be found lurking; his Body and the Cloth are the site 

* and materials whereon and whereby his beautified 
' edifice, of a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow 
' gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light sandals ; 

* tower up in high headgear, from amid peaks, spangles 

* and bell-girdles ; swell out in starched ruffs, buckram 
'stuffings and monstrous tuberosities; or girth himself 

* into separate sections, and front the world an Agglo- 

* meration of four limbs, — will depend on the nature of 

* such Architectural Idea : whether Grecian, Gothic, 

* Later-Gothic, or altogether Modern, and Parisian or 

* Anglo-Dandiacal. Again, what meaning lies in 

* Colour ! From the soberest drab to the high-flaming 

* scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold themselves in 

* choice of Colour : if the Cut betoken Intellect and 

* Talent, so does the Colour betoken Temper and Heart. 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 35 

* In all which, among nations as among individuals, 
' there is an incessant, indubitable, though infinitely 

* complex working of Cause and Effect : every snip of 
' the Scissors has been regulated and prescribed by 

* ever-active Influences, which doubtless to Intelligences 

* of a superior order are neither invisible nor illegible. 

' For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and-Effect 

* Philosophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a 

* comfortable winter-evening entertainment: nevertheless, 

* for inferior Intelligences, like men, such Philosophies 

* have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. Nay, 

* what is your Montesquieu himself but a clever infant 

* spelling Letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic Book, 

* the lexicon of which lies in Eternity, in Heaven ? — 

* Let any Cause-and-Effect Philosopher explain, not 

* why I wear such and such a Garment, obey such and 
' such a Law ; but even why / am here, to wear and 

* obey any thing ! — Much, therefore, if not the whole, 

* of that same Spirit of Clothes I shall suppress, as 

* hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent : naked 

* Facts, and Deductions drawn therefrom in quite 
' another than that omniscient style, are my humbler 

* and proper province.' 

Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdrockh 
has nevertheless contrived to take in a well nigh bound- 
less extent of field ; at least, the boundaries too often lie 
quite beyond our horizon. Selection being indispensa- 
ble, we shall here glance over his First Part only in the 
most cursory manner. This First Part is, no doubt, 
distinguished by omnivorous learning, and utmost pa- 
tience and fairness : at the same time, in its results and 
delineations, it is much more likely to interest the Com- 



36 SARTOR REBARTUS. 

pilers of some Library of General, Entertaining, Useful, 
or even Useless Knowledge than the miscellaneous 
readers of these pages. Was it this Part of the Book 
which Heuschrecke had in view, when he recommended 
us to that joint-stock vehicle of publication, * at present 
the glory of British Literature 1 ' If so, the Library 
Editors are welcome to dig in it for their own behoof. 

To the First Chapter, which turns on Paradise and 
Fig-leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions 
of a mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial and 
quite antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves with 
giving an unconcerned approval. Still less have we to 
do with * Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, according to 

* the Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who bore him, 
' in that wedlock, the whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, 

* and terrestial Devils,' — very needlessly, we think. 
On this portion of the work, with its profound glances 
into the Adam-Kadmon, or Primeval Element, here 
strangely brought into relation with the Nifl and Muspel 
(Darkness and Light) of the antique North, it may be 
enough to say that its correctness of deduction, and 
depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore has filled perhaps 
not the worst Hebraist in Britain with something like 
astonishment. 

But quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdrockh has- 
tens from the Tower of Babel, to follow the dispersion 
of Mankind over the whole habitable and habilable 
globe. Walking by the light of Oriental, Pelasgic, 
Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and Mo- 
dern researches of every conceivable kind, he strives to 
give us in compressed shape (as the Niirnbergers give 
an Orbis Pictus) an Or bis Vestitus ; or view of the 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 37 

costumes of all mankind, in all countries, in all times. 
It is here that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we 
can triumphantly say : Fall to ! Here is Learning : an 
irregular Treasury, if you will ; but inexhaustible as the 
Hoard of King Nibelung, which twelve waggons in 
twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a day, could 
not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts ; 
phylacteries, stoles, albs ; chlamides, togas, Chinese 
silks, Afghaun shawls, trunk hose, leather breeches, 
Celtic philibegs (though breeches, as the name Gallia 
Braccata indicates, are the more ancient). Hussar cloaks, 
Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly 
before us, — even the Kilmarnock nightcap is not for- 
gotten. For most part too we must admit that the 
Learning, heterogeneous as it is, and tumbled down 
quite pell-mell, is true concentrated and purified Learn- 
ing, the drossy parts smelted out and thrown aside. 

Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes 
touching pictures of human life. Of this sort the fol- 
lowing has surprised us. The first purpose of Clothes, 
as our Professor imagines, was not warmth or decency, 
but ornament. * Miserable indeed,' says he, * was the 
' condition of the Aboriginal Savage, glaring fiercely 

* from under his fleece of hair, which with the beard 

* reached down to his loins, and hung round him like a 

* matted cloak ; the rest of his body sheeted in its thick 

* natural fell. He loitered in the sunny glades of the 

* forest, living on wild fruits ; or, as the ancient Cale- 

* donian, squatted himself in morasses, lurking for his 

* bestial or human prey ; without implements, without 
' arms, save the ball of heavy Flint, to which, that his 

* sole possession and defence might not be lost, he had 

5 



38 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

attached a long cord of plaited thongs ; thereby recover- 
ing as well as hurling it with deadly unerring skill. 
Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and Revenge once 
satisfied, his next care was not Comfort but Decoration 
(Putz). Warmth he found in the toils of the chase ; 
or amid dried leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark 
shed, or natural grotto : but for Decoration he must 
have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, we find tat- 
tooing and painting even prior to Clothes. The first 
spiritual want of a barbarous man is Decoration, as 
indeed we still see among the barbarous classes in 
civilised countries. 

* Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious Singer ; 
loftiest Serene Highness ; nay thy own amber-locked, 
snow-and-rosebloom Maiden, worthy to glide sylphlike 
almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as a 
divine Presence, which indeed, symbolically taken, she 
is, — has descended, like thyself, from that same hair- 
mantled, flint-hurling Aboriginal Anthropophagus ! 
Out of the eater cometh forth meat; out of the strong 
Cometh forth sweetness. What changes are wrought, 
not by Time, yet in Time! For not Mankind only, 
but all that Mankind does or beholds, is in continual 
growth, re-genesis and self-perfecting vitality. Cast 
forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living, ever- 
working Universe : it is a seed-grain that cannot die ; 
unnoticed to-day (says one) it will be found flourishing 
as a Banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a Hemlock-forest !) 
after a thousand years. 

* He who first shortened the labour of Copyists by 
device of Movable Types was disbanding hired Armies, 
and cashiering most Kings and Senates, and creating a 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 39 

* whole new Democratic world : he had invented the Art 

* of Printing. The first ground handful of Nitre, Sul- 

* phur, and Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle 

* through the ceiling : what will the last do? Achieve! 
' the final undisputed prostration of Force under 
' Thought, of Animal Courage under Spiritual. A sim- 

* pie invention it was in the old-world Grazier, — sick of 
' lugging his slow Ox about the country till he got it 

* bartered for corn or oil, — to take a piece of Leather, 

* and thereon scratch or stamp the mere Figure of an 
' Ox (or Pecus) ; put it in his pocket, and call it 
' Pecimia, Money. Yet hereby did Barter grow Sale, 
' the Leather Money is now Golden and Paper, and all 

* miracles have been out-miracled : for there are Roths- 

* chiids and English National Debts ; and whoso has 

* sixpence is Sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over 

* all men ; commands Cooks to feed him, Philosophers 

* to teach him, Kings to mount guard over him, — to the 

* length of sixpence. — Clothes too, which began in 
' foolishest love of Ornament, what have they not be- 
' come ! Increased Security, and pleasurable Heat soon 

* followed : but what of these ? Shame, divine Shame 
' [Schaam, Modesty), as yet a stranger to the Anthro- 

* pophagous bosom, arose there mysteriously under 

* Clothes ; a mystic grove-encircled shrine for the Holy 
' in man. Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, 
' social polity ; Clothes have made Men of us ; they are 

* threateninop to make Clothes-screens of us. 

' But on the whole,' continues our eloquent Professor, 

* Man is a Tool-using Animal (Hanthierendes Thier). 
^ Weak in himself, and of small stature, he stands on a 

* basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half square- 



40 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* foot, insecurely enough ; has to straddle out his legs, 

* lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds ! 

* Three quintals are a crushing load for him ; the Steer 

* of the meadow tosses him aloft like a waste raff, Ne- 
' vertheless he can use Tools, can devise Tools : with 

* these the granite mountain melts into light dust before 
' him ; he kneads glowing iron, as if it were soft paste ; 

* seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his un- 

* wearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without 

* Tools ; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he 
' is all.' 

Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the stream 
i of Oratory with a remark that this Definition of the 
/ Tool-using Animal appears to us, of all that Animal- 
j sort, considerably the precisestand best? Man is called 
\ a Laughing Animal : but do not the apes also laugh, or 
I attempt to do it ; and is the manliest man the greatest 
and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdrockh himself, as we 
said, laughed only once. Still less do we make of that 
other French Definition of the Cooking Animal; which, 
indeed, for rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as 
useless. Can a Tartar be said to cook, when he only 
readies his steak by riding on it? Again, what Cookery 
does the Greenlander use, beyond stowing up his whale- 
blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do ? Or 
how would Monsieur Ude prosper among those Orinocco 
Indians who, according to Humboldt, lodge in crow- 
nests, on the branches of trees; and, for half the year, 
have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole country being 
under water ? But on the other hand, show us the 
human being, of any period or climate, without ^is 
Tools : those very Caledonians, as we saw, had their 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 41 

Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such as no brute has or caft 
have. 

* Man is a Tool-using animal,' concludes Teufels- 
drockh in his abrupt way ; ' of which truth Clothes are 

* but one example : and surely if we consider the interval 

* between the first wooden Dibble fashioned by man, and 

* those Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British House 

* of Commons, we shall note what progress he has made. 

* He digs up certain black stones from the bosom of the 

* Earth, and says to them. Transport me, and this lug- 

* gnge, at the rate of Jive-and-thirty miles an hour ; and 
' they do it : he collects, apparently by lot, six hundred 
' and fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, and says to 
' them, Make this nation toil for us, bleed for us^ hunger, 

* and sorrow J and sin for us ; and they do it.' 



5* 



V 

42 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER VI. 



APRONS. 



One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in the whole 
Volume is that on Apt^ons. What though stout old 
Gao the Persian Blacksmith, * whose Apron, now indeed 
' hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt which 
' proved successful, is still the royal standard of that 
' country ;' what though John Knox's Daughter, ' who 

* threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would catch her 

* Husband's head in her Apron, rather than he should 

* lie and be a bishop ;' what though the Landgravine 
Elizabeth, with many other Apron worthies, — figure 
here 1 An idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes even a 
tone of levity, approaching to conventional satire, is too 
clearly discernible. What, for example, are we to make 
of such sentences as the following? 

' Aprons are Defences ; against injury to cleanliness, 

* to safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. From the 

* thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the Emblem and 

* beatified Ghost of an Apron), which some highest-bred 
' housewife, sitting at Nijrnberg Workboxes and Toy- 

* boxes, has gracefijlly fastened on ; to the thick-tanned 

* hide, girt round him with thongs, wherein the Builder 

* builds, and at evening sticks his trowel ; or to those 

* jingling sheet-iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise half- 

* naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their Smelt- 
' furnace, — is there not range enough in the fashion and 



APRONS. 43 

* uses of this Vestment ? How much has been con- 

* cealed, how much lias been defended in Aprons ! Nay, 
' rightly considered, what is your whole Military and 

* Police Establishment, charged at uncalculated niil- 

* lions, but a huge scarlet-coloured, iron-fastened Apron, 
' wherein Society works (uneasily enough) ; guarding 
' itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's- 
' smithy ( Teiffeh-schmiede) of a world ? But of all 

* Aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has been the 

* Episcopal, or Cassock. Wherein consists the usefulness 

* of this Apron? The Overseer {Episcopus) of Souls, I no- 
' tice, has tucked in the corner of it, as if his day's work 

* were done : what does he shadow forth thereby V &lc. &c. 

Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to 
read such stuff as we shall rfbw quote ? 

* I consider those printed Paper Aprons, worn by the 
' Parisian Cooks, as a new vent, though a slight one, for 
' Typography ; therefore as an encouragement to modern 
' Literature, and deserving of approval : nor is it without 

* satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated London Firm 
' having in view to introduce the same fashion, with im- 

* portant^xtensions, in England.' — We who are on the 
spot hear of no such thing ; and indeed have reason to 
be thankful that hitherto there are other vents for our 
Literature, exuberant as it is, — Teufelsdrockh continues : 

* If such supply of printed Paper should rise so far as to 
' choke up the highways and public ^thoroughfares, new 
' means must of necessity be had recourse to. In a 

* world existing by Industry, we grudge to employ Fire 

* as a destroying element, and not as a creating one. 

* However, Heaven is omnipotent, and will find us an 
' outlet. In the mean while, is it not beautiful to see five 

* million quintals of Rags picked annually from the Lay- 



44 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* Stall ; and annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, 
' printed on, and sold, — returned thither ; filling so many 

* hungry mouths by the way ? Thus is the Laystall, 

* especially with its Rags, or Clothes-rubbish, the grand 

* Electric Battery, and Fountain-of-Motion, from which 

* and to which the Social Activities (like vitreous and 

* resinous Electricities) circulate, in larger or smaller 

* circles, through the mighty, billowy, stormtost Chaos of 

* Life, which they keep alive ! ' — Such passages fill us, 
who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a very 
mixed feeling. 

Farther down we met with this : ' The Journalists 

* are now the true Kings and Clergy : henceforth Histo- 

* rians, unless they are fools, must write not of Bourbon 

* Dynasties, and Tudors and Hapsburgs ; but of Stamped 

* Broad-sheet Dynasties, and quite new successive Names, 

* according as this or the other Able Editor, or Combina- 

* tion of Able Editors, gains the world's ear. Of the 

* British Newspaper Press, perhaps the most important of 
' all, and wonderful enough in its secret constitution and 

* procedure, a valuable descriptive History already exists, 

* in that language, under the title of Sat a7i's .Invisible 

* World Displayed ; which, however, by search in all 

* the Weissnichtwo Libraries, I have not yet succeeded 

* in procuring {vermochte nicht aufzufreiben).' 

Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. 
Thus does Teufelsdtockh, wandering in regions where he 
had little business, confound the old authentic Presbyte- 
rian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, imaginary His- 
torian of the Brittische Journalistik ; and so stumble on 
perhaps the most egregious blunder in Modern Lite- 
rature ! 



MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 45 



CHAPTER VII. 



MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 



Happier is our Professor, and more purely scientific and 
historic, when he reaches the Middle Ages in Europe, 
and down to the end of the Seventeenth Century ; the 
true era of extravagance in Costume. It is here that the 
Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon his richest 
harvest. Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of a Teniers 
or a Callot, succeed each other, like monster devouring 
monster in a Dream. The whole too in brief authentic 
strokes, and touched not seldom with that breath of 
genius which makes even old raiment alive. Indeed, so 
learned, precise, graphical, and every way interesting 
\have we found these Chapters, that it may be thrown out 
as a pertinent question for parties concerned, Whether or 
rot a good English Translation thereof might henceforth 
bp profitably incorporated with Mr. Merrick's valuable 
Work On Ancient Armour? Take, by way of example, 
th/ following sketch ; as authority for which Paulinus's 
Zeitkurzende Lust (ii. 678) is, with seeming confidence, 
r^J)erred to : * 

")Did we behold the German fashionable dress of the 

* Fifteenth Century, we might smile; as perhaps those 

* biWone Germans, were they to rise again, and see our 
' h?/berdashery, would cross themselves, and invoke the 

* \firgin. But happily no bygone German, or man, rises 



46 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

' again ; thus the Present is not needlessly trammelled 

* with the Past ; and only grows out of it, like a Tree, 

* whose roots are not intertangled with its branches, but 
' lie peaceably under ground. Nay it is very mournful, 

* yet not useless, to see and know, how the Greatest and 

* Dearest, in a short while, would find his place quite filled 
' up here, and no room for him ; the very Napoleon, the 

* very Byron, in some seven years, has become obsolete, 
' and were now a foreigner to his Europe. Thus is the 
' Law of Progress secured j and in Clothes, as in all 
' other external things whatsoever, no fashion will con- 

* tinue. 

' Of the military classes in those old times, whose 

* buff-belts, complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn- 
' boots, and other riding and fighting gear have been be- 

* painted in modern Romance, till the whole has acquired 

* somewhat of a signpost character, — I shall here say 

* nothing : the civil and pacific classes, less touched upon, 

* are wonderful enough for us. 

* Rich men, I find, have Teudnke' (a perhaps un- 
translateable article) ; ' also a silver girdle, whereat hang 
' little bells ; so that when a man walks it is with con- 
' tinual jingling. Some few, of musical turn, have a 

* whole chime of bells {Glockenspiel) fastened there'; 

* which especially, in sudden whirls, and the other a^- 

* cidents of walking, has a grateful effect. Observe too 

* how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic-arch inters€«3- 

* tions. The male world wears peaked caps, an ell-long, 

* which hang bobbing over the side (schief) : their slvoes 
' are peaked in front, also to th.e length of an ell, stnd 

* laced on the side with tags ; even the wooden shWs 

* have their ell-long noses : some also clap bells on tljie 



MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 



47 



peak. Farther, according to my authority, the men 
have breeches without seat {ohne Gesdss) : these they 
fasten peak wise to their shirts; and the iong round 
doublet must overlap them. 

' Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scolloped 
out behind and before, so that back and breast are 
almost bare. Wives of quality, on the other hand, 
have train-gowns four or five ells in length ; which 
trains there are boys to carry. Brave Cleopatras sail- 
ing in their silk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid for steers- 
man ! Consider their welts, a handbreadth thick, which 
waver round them by way of a hem ; the long flood of 
silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from throat to 
shoe, wherewith these same welt-gowns are buttoned. 
The maidens have bound silver snoods about their hair, 
with gold spangles, and pendent flames {Flammen)^ 
that is, sparkling hair-drops : but of their mother's 
headgear who shall speak ? Neither in love of grace is 
comfort forgotten. In winter weather you behold the 
whole fair creation (that can afford it) in long mantles, 
with skirts wide below, and, for hem, not one but two 
sufficient handbroad welts : all ending atop in a thick 
well-starched Ruff", some twenty inches broad : these 
are their RufT-mantles {Kragenmdntel). 

' As yet, among the womankind hoop-petticoats are 
not ; but the men have doublets of fustian, under which 
lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted together with batter 
{mit Teig zusammengekleistert)^ which create protu- 
berance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each 
other in the art of Decoration j and as usual the stronger 
carries it.' 

Our Professor, whether he have Humour himself or 



48 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

not, manifests a certain feeling of the Ludicrous, a sly 
observance of it, which, could emotion of any kind be 
confidently predicated of so still a man, we might call a 
real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, 
cornuted shoes, or other the like phenomena, of which 
the History of Dress offers so many, escape him ; more 
especially the mischances, or striking adventures, incident 
to the wearers of such, are noticed with due fidelity. Sir 
Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which bespread in the mud 
under Q,ueen Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little 
enthusiasm in him ; he merely asks, Whether at that 
period the Maiden Queen * was red-painted on the nose, 
' and white-painted on the cheeks, as her tirewomen, 
' when from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer 
' look in any glass, were wont to serve her 1 ' We can 
answer that Sir Waiter knew well what he was doing, 
and had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment dyed 
in verdigris, would have done the same. 

Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, that 
were not only slashed and galooned, but artificially swol- 
len out on the broader parts of the body, by introduction 
of Bran, — our Professor fails not to comment on that 
luckless Courtier, who having seated himself on a chair 
with some projecting nail on it, and therefrom rising, to 
pay his devoir on the entrance of Majesty, instantaneously 
etnitted several pecks of dry wheat-dust : and stood there 
diminished to a spindle, his galoons and slashes dangling 
sorrowful and fiabby round him. Whereupon the Pro- 
fessor publishes this reflection : 

* By what strange chances do we live in History! 

* Erostratus by a torch ; Miio by a bullock ; Henry Darn- 

* ley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his limbs ; 



MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 49 

* most Kings and dueens by being born under such and 

* such a bed-tester ; Boileau Despreaux (according to 

* Helvetius) by the peck of a turkey ; and this ill-starred 
' individual by a rent in his breeches, — for no Memoirist 

* of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. Vain was the prayer 

* of Themistocles for a talent of Forgetting : my Friends, 
' yield cheerfully to Destiny, and read since it is written.' 
— Has Teufelsdrockh to be put in mind that, nearly 
related to the impossible talent of Forgetting, stands that 
talent of Silence, which even travelling Englishmen 
manifest? 

' The simplest costume,' observes our Professor, ' which 

* I anywhere find alluded to in History, is that used as 

* regimental, by Bolivar's Cavalry, in the late Columbian 
' wars. A square Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, is 

* provided (some were wont to cut off the corners, and 
' make it circular) : in the centre a slit is effected 

* eighteen inches long ; through this the mother-naked 

* Trooper introduces his head and neck j and so rides 

* shielded from all weather, and in battle from many 

* strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm) ; and not 

* only dressed, but harnessed and draperied.' 

With which picture of a State of Nature, affecting by 
its singularity, and Old-Roman contempt of the super- 
fluous, we shall quit this part of our subject. 



6 



50 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



\/ 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 

If in the Descriptive-Historical Portion of this Volume, 
Teufelsdrockh, discussing merely the Werden (Origin 
and successive Improvement) of Clothes, has astonished 
many a reader, much more will he in the Speculative- 
Philosophical Portion, which treats of their Wirken^ or 
Influences. It is here that the present Editor first feels 
the pressure of his task ; for here properly the higher 
and new Philosophy of Clothes commences : an untried, 
almost inconceivable region, or chaos : in venturing 
upon which, how difficult, yet how unspeakably impor- 
tant is it to know what course, of survey and conquest, 
is the true one ; where the footing is firm substance and 
will bear us, where it is hollow, or mere cloud, and may 
engulf us! Teufelsdrockh undertakes no less than to 
expound the moral, political, even religious Influences 
of Clothes; he undertakes to make manifest, in its thou- 
sandfold bearings, this grand Proposition, that Man's 
earthly interests * are all hooked and buttoned together, 

* and held up, by Clothes.' He says in so many words, 

* Society is founded upon Cloth ; ' and again, ' Society 

* sails through the Infinitude on Cloth, as on a Faust's 

* Mantle, or rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean 

* beasts in the Apostle's Dream ; and without such 

* Sheet or Mantle, would sink to endless depths, or 



THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 51 

* mount to inane limboes, and in either case be no 

* more.' 

By what chains, or indeed infinitely complected 
tissues, of Meditation this grand Theorem is here un- 
folded, and innumerable practical Corollaries are drawn 
therefrom, it were perhaps a mad ambition to attempt 
exhibiting. Our Professor's method is not, in any 
case, that of common school Logic, where the truths 
all stand in a row, each holding by the skirts of the 
other ; but at best that of practical Reason, proceeding 
by large Intuition over whole systematic groups and 
kingdoms; whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, 
almost like that of Nature, reigns in his Philosophy, or 
spiritual Picture of Nature : a mighty maze, yet, as faith 
whispers, not without a plan. Nay, we complained 
above, that a certain ignoble complexity, what we must 
call mere confusion, was also discernible. Often, too, 
must we exclaim : Would to Heaven those same Bio- 
graphical Documents were come ! For it seems as if the 
demonstration lay much in the Author's individuality ; 
as if it were not Argument that had taught him, but 
Experience. At present it is only in local glimpses, and 
by significant fragments, picked often at wide enough 
intervals from the original Volume, and carefully col- 
lated, that we can hope to impart some outline or fore- 
shadow of this Doctrine. Readers of any intelligence 
are once more invited to favour us H'ith their most con- 
centrated attention : let these, after intense considera- 
tion, and not till then, pronounce. Whether on the 
utmost verge of our actual horizon there is not a looming 
as of Land ; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps 
whole undiscovered Americas, for such as have canvass 



52 SARTOR RES ART US. 

to sail thither ? — As exordium to the whole, stand here 

the following long citation : 

* With men of a speculative turn,' writes Teufels- 
drockh, * there come seasons, meditative, sweet, yet 
awful hours, when in wonder and fear you ask yourself 
that unanswerable question : Who am /; the thing that 
can say " I" {das Wesen das sich Ich ncnni) 1 The 
world, with its loud trafficking, retires into the distance ; 
and, through the paper-hangings, and stone-walls, and 
thick-plied tissues of Commerce and Polity, and all the 
living and lifeless Integuments (of Society and a Body), 
wherewith your Existence sits surrounded, — the sight 
reaches forth into the void Deep, and you are alone with 
the Universe, and silently commune with it, as one 
mysterious Presence with another. 

' Who am I ; what is this Me ? A Voice, a Motion, 
an Appearance ; — some embodied, visualised Idea in 
the Eternal Mind 1 Cogito ergo sum. Alas, poor 
Cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, 
I am; and lately was not: but Whence? How? 
Whereto ? The answer lies around, written in all co- 
lours and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and 
wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious 
Nature : but where is the cunning eye and ear to whom 
that God-written Apocalypse will yield articulate mean- 
ing ? We sit as in a boundless Phantasmagoria and 
Dream-grotto ; boundless, for the faintest star, the re- 
motest century, lies not even nearer the verge thereof: 
sounds and many-coloured visions flit round our sense ; 
but Him, the Unslumbering, whose work both Dream 
and Dreamer are, we see not ; except in rare half- 
waking moments, suspect not. Creation, says one, lies 



THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 53 

* before us, like a glorious Rainbow ; but the Sun that 

* made it lies behind us, hidden from us. Then, in that 
' strange Dream, how we clutch at shadows as if they 
' were substances ; and sleep deepest wliile fancying our- 
' selves most awake ! Which of your Philosophical 

* Systems is other than a dream theorem ; a net quotient, 
' confidently given out, where divisor and dividend are 

* both unknown ? What are all your national Wars, 

* with their Moscow Retreats, and sanguinary hate-filled 

* Revolutions, but the Somnambulism of uneasy Sleepers? 

* This Dreaming, this Somnambulism is what we on 

* Earth call Life ; wherein the most indeed undoubtingly 
' wander, as if they knew right hand from left; yet they 

* only are wise who know that they know'nothing. 

' Pity that all Metaphysics had hitherto proved so in- 
' expressibly unproductive ! The secret of Man's Being 

* is still like the Sphinx's secret : a riddle that he can- 
' not rede ; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, 
' the worst death, a spiritual. What are your Axioms, 

* and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? Words, 

* words. High Air-castles are cunningly built of Words, 
' the Words well bedded also in good Logic-mortar ; 

* wherein, however, no Knowledge will come to lodge. 
' The whole is greater than the part: how exceedingly 

* true ! Nature abhors a vacuvm : how exceedingly 

* false and calumnious ! Again, Nothing can act hut 

* where it is : with all my heart ; only where is it ? Be 

* not the slave of Words : is not the Distant, the Dead, 
' while I love it, and long for it, and mourn for it. Here, 
' in the genuine sense, as truly as the floor I stand on ? 

* But that same Where, with its brother When, are 
' from the first the master-colours of our Dream-grotto ; 

6* 



54 SAHTOtl RESARTtg. 

* say rather, the Canvass (the warp and woof thereof) 
' whereon all our Dreams and Life-visions are painted. 

* Nevertheless, has not a deeper meditation taught certain 

* of every climate and age, that the Where and When, 

* so mysteriously inseparable from all our thoughts, are 

* but superficial terrestrial adhesions to thought ; that 
' the Seer may discern them where they mount up out of 

* the celestial Everywheue and Forever : have not all 
' nations conceived their God as Omnipresent and Eter- 

* nal ; as existing in a universal Here, an everlasting 

* Now ? Think well, thou too wilt find that Space is 

* but a mode of our human Sense, so likewise Time ; 

* there is no Space and no Time : We are — we know 

* not what ; — light-sparkles floating in the aether of 
' Deity ! 

' So that this so solid-seeming World, after all, were 

* but an air-image, our Me the only reality : and Nature, 

* with its thousandfold production and destruction, but 

* the reflex of our own inward Force, the " phantasy of 

* our Dream;" or what the Earth-Spirit in Faust names 

* it, the living visible Garment of God : 

' " In Being's floods, in Action's storm, 
1 walk and work, above, beneath. 
Work and weave in endless motion ! 
Birth and Death, 
An infinite ocean ; 
A seizing and giving 
The fire of the Living : 

'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, 
And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by." 

' Of twenty millions that have read and spouted this 

* thunder-speech of the Erdgeist, are there yet twenty 
' units of us that have learned the meaning thereof?' 



THE WORLD OUT OP CLOTHES. 55 

' It was in some such mood, when wearied and fore- 
done with these high speculations, that I first came 
upon the question of Clothes. Strange enough, it 
strikes me, is this same fact of there being Tailors and 
Tailored. The Horse I ride has his own whole fell : 
strip him of the girths and flaps and extraneous tags I 
have fastened round him, and the noble creature is hig 
own sempster and weaver and spinner : nay his own 
bootmaker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he bounds free 
through the valleys, with a perennial rainproof court- 
suit on his body ; wherein warmth and easiness of fit 
have reached perfection ; nay, the graces also have been 
considered, and frills and fringes, with gay variety of 
colour, featly appended, and ever in the right place, 
are not wanting. While I — good Heaven ! — have 
thatched myself over with the dead fleeces of sheep, 
the bark of vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides 
of oxen or seals, the felt of furred breasts ; and walk 
abroad a moving Rag-screen, overheaped with shreds 
and tatters raked from the Charnel-house of Nature, 
where they would have rotted, to rot on me more 
slowly ! Day after day, I must thatch myself anew ; 
day after day, this despicable thatch must lose some 
film of its thickness; some film of it, frayed away by 
tear and wear, must be brushed off into the Ashpit, 
into the Laystall ; till by degrees the whole has been 
brushed thither, and I, the dust-making, patent Rag- 
grinder, get new material to grind down. O subter- 
brutish ! vile ! most vile ! For have not I too a com- 
pact all-enclosing Skin, whiter or dingier? Am I a 
botched mass of tailors' and cobblers' shreds, then ; 
or a tightly-articulated, homogeneous little Figure, 
automatic, nay alive ? 



56 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* Strange enough bow creatures of the human-kind 
shut their eyes to plainest facts ; and by the mere 
inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, live at ease in the 
midst of Wonders and Terrors. But indeed man is 
and was always, a blockhead and dullard ; much rea- 
dier to feel and digest, than to think and consider. 
Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute 
lawgiver ; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him by 
the nose : thus let but a Rising of the Sun, let but a 
Creation of the World happen twice, and it ceases to 
be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable. Per- 
haps not once in a lifetime does it occur to your ordi- 
nary biped, of any country or generation, be he gold- 
mantled Prince or russet-jerkined Peasant, that his 
Vestments and his Self are not one and indivisible : 
that he is naked, without vestments, till he buy or steal 
such, and by forethought sew and button them. 

* For my own part, these considerations, ofour Clothes- 
thatch, and how, reaching inwards even to our heart of 
hearts, it tailorises and demoralises us, fill me with a 
certain horror at myself and mankind ; almost as one 
feels at those Dutch Cows, which, during the wet sea- 
son, you see grazing deliberately with jackets and pet- 
ticoats (of striped sacking), in the meadows of Gouda. 
Nevertheless there is something great in the moment 
when a man first strips himself of adventitious wrap- 
pages; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, as Swift 
has it, " a forked straddling animal with bandy legs;" 
yet also a Spirit, and unutterable Mystery of Mysteries.' 



ADAMITISM. 57 



CHAPTER IX 



ADAMITISM. 



Let no courteous reader take offence at the opinions 
broached in the conclusion of the last Chapter. The 
Editor himself, on first glancing over that singular pas- 
sage, was inclined to exclaim : What, have we got not 
only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the 
abstract ? A new Adamite, in this century, which flat- 
ters itself that it is the Nineteenth, and destructive both 
to Superstition and Enthusiasm ? 

Consider, thou foolish Teufelsdrockh, what benefits 
unspeakable all ages and sexes derive from Clothes. 
For example, when thou thyself, a watery, pulpy, slobbery 
freshman and new-comer in this Planet, sattest muling 
and puking in thy nurse's arms ; sucking thy coral, and 
looking forth into the world in the blankest manner, 
what hadst thou been, without thy blankets, and bibs, 
and other nameless hulls ? A terror to thyself and man- 
kind ! Or hast thou forgotten the day when thou first 
receivedst breeches, and thy long clothes became short ? 
The village where thou livedst was all apprised of the 
fact ; and neighbour after neighbour kissed thy pudding 
cheek, and gave thee, as handsel, silver or copper coins, 
on that the first gala-day of thy existence. Again, wert 
not thou, at one period of life, a Buck, or Blood, or 
Macaroni, or Incroyable, or Dandy, or by whatever 



58 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

name, according to year and place, such phenomenon is 
distinguished 1 In that one word lie included mysterious 
volumes. Nay, now when the reign of folly is over, or 
altered, and thy clothes are not for triumph but for de- 
fence, hast thou always worn them perforce, and as a con- 
sequence of Man's Fall ; never rejoiced in them as in a 
warm movable House, a Body round thy Body, wherein 
that strange Thee of thine sat snug, defying all variations 
of Climate ? Girt with thick double-milled kerseys ; half- 
buried under shawls and broadbrims, and overalls and 
niudboots, thy very fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, 
thou hast bestrode that ' Horse I ride ;' and, though it 
were in wild winter, dashed through the world, glorying 
in it as if thou wert its lord. In vain did the sleet beat 
round thy temples ; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, 
felted or woven, case of wool. In vain did the winds 
howl, — forests sounding and creaking, deep calling unto 
deep, — and the storms heap themselves together into 
one huge Arctic whirlpool : thou flewest through the 
middle thereof, striking fire from the highway ; wild 
music hummed in thy ears, thou too wert as a * sailor of 
the air ;' the wreck of matter and the crash of worlds was 
thy element and propitiously wafting tide. Without 
Clothes, without bit or saddle, what hadst thou been ; 
what had thy fleet quadruped been ? — Nature is good, 
but she is not the best : here truly was the victory of Art 
over Nature. A thunderbolt indeed might have pierced 
thee ; all short of this thou couldst defy. 

Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufelsdrockh 
forgotten what he said lately about ' Aboriginal Savages,' 
and their * condition miserable indeed?' Would he have 
all this unsaid ; and us betake ourselves again to the 



ADAMITISM. 59 

* matted cloak,' and go sheeted in a * thick natural 
fell 1 ' 

Nowise, courteous reader ! The Professor knows full 
well what he is saying ; and both thou and we, in our 
haste, do him wrong. If Clothes, in these times, ' so 
lailorise and demoralise us,' have they no redeeming 
value ; can they not be altered to serve better ; must they 
of necessity be thrown to the dogs? The truth is, 
Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, is no Adamite : 
and much perhaps as he might wish to go forth before 
this degenerate age 'as a Sign,' would nowise wish to 
do it, as those old Adamites did, in a state of Nakedness. 
The utility of Clothes is altogether apparent to him : nay 
perhaps he has an insight into their more recondite, and 
almost mystic qualities, what we might call the omni- 
potent virtue of Clothes, such as was never before vouch- 
safed to any man. For example : 

* You see two individuals,' he writes, ' one dressed in 

* fine Red, the other in coarse threadbare Blue : Red 

* says to Blue, *' Be hanged and anatomised ;" Blue 

* hears with a shudder, and (O wonder of wonders !) 

* marches sorrowfully to the gallows ; is there noosed up, 

* vibrates his hour, and the surgeons dissect him,, and fit 

* his bones into a skeleton for medical purposes. How 
' is this ; or what make ye of your Nothing can act but 

* where it is? Red has no physical hold of Blue, no 
' clutch of him, is nowise in contact with him : neither 

* are those ministering Sheriffs and Lord-Lieutenants and 

* Hangmen and Tipstaves so related to commanding 

* Red, that he can tug them hither and thither ; but each 

* stands distinct within his own skin. Nevertheless, as 

* it is spoken, so is it done : the articulated Word sets all 



,<'■ 



60 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 



* hands in Action ; and Rope and Improved-drop perform 

* their work. 

* Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold ; 

* First, that Man is a Spirit, and bound by invisible 

* bonds to All Men ; Secondly, that he wears Clothes, 
' which are the visible emblems of that fact. Has not 

* your Red hanging-individual a horsehair wig, squirrel 
' skins, and a plush gown : whereby all mortals know that 

* he is a Judge ? — Society, which the more I think of it 

* astonishes me the more, is founded upon Cloth. 

* Often in my atrabiliar moods, when I read of pompous 

* ceremonials, Frankfort Coronations, Royal Drawing- 
' rooms, Levees, Couchees ; and how the ushers and 

* macers and pursuivants are all in waiting ; how Duke 

* this is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by 

* General B, and innumerable Bishops, Admirals, and 
' miscellaneous Functionaries, are advancing gallantly to 

* the Anointed Presence ; and I strive, in my remote 

* privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity, — on 

* a sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, the — shall I 

* speak it 1 — the Clothes fly off the whole dramatic corps ; 

* and Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, Generals, Anointed 

* Presence itself, every mother's son of them, stand 

* straddling there, not a shirt on them ; and I know not 

* whether to laugh or weep. This physical or psychical 

* infirmity, in which perhaps I am not singular, I have, 

* after hesitation, thought right to publish, for the solace 

* of those afflicted with the like.' 

Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right to 
keep it secret ! Who is there now that can read the five 
columns of Presentations in his Morning Newspaper 
without a shudder ? Hypochondriac men, and all men 



ADAMITISM. 61 

are to a certain extent hypochondriac, should be more 
gently treated. With what readiness our fancy, in this 
shattered state of the nerves, follows out the consequences 
which Teufelsdrockh, with a devilish coolness, goes on 
to draw : 

' What would Majesty do, could such an accident 

* befall in reality ; should the buttons all simultaneously 

* start, and the solid wool evaporate, in very Deed, as 

* here in Dream? Ach GottI How each skulks into 

* the nearest hiding-place ; their high State Tragedy 

* {Hmipt- und Staats- Action) becomes a Pickleherring- 
' Farce to weep at, which is the worst kind of Farce ; the 

* tables (according to Horace), and with them, the whole 

* fabric of Government, Legislation, Property, Police, 

* and Civilised Society, are dissolved, in wails and 

* howls.' 

Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of Win- 
dlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords ? Imagi- 
nation, choked as in mephitic air, recoils on itself, and 
will not forward with the picture. The Woolsack, 
the Ministerial, the Opposition Benches — infandum ! 
infandum! And yet why is the thing impossible? Was 
not every soul, or rather every body, of these Guardians 
of our Liberties, naked, or nearly so, last night ; * a 
forked Radish with a head fantastically carved ?' And 
why might he not, did our stern Fate so order it, walk 
out to St. Stephen's, as well as into bed, in that no- 
fashion ; and there, with other similar Radishes, hold a 
Bed of Justice ? ' Solace of those afflicted with the 
like!' Unhappy Teufelsdrockh, had man ever such a 

* physical or psychical infirmity' before ? And now how 
many, perhaps, may thy unparalleled confession (which 

7 



62 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

we, even to the sounder British world, and goaded on by 
Critical and Biographical duty, grudge to re-impart) in- 
curably infect therewith! Art thou the malignest of 
Sansculottists, or only the maddest ? 

* It will remain to be examined,' adds the inexorable 
Teufelsdrockh, * in how far the Scarecrow, as a 

* Clothed Person, is not also entitled to benefit of clergy, 

* and English trial by jury : nay, perhaps, considering his 

* high function (for is not he too a Defender of Property, 

* and Sovereign armed with the terrors of the Law ?), to a 

* certain royal Immunity and Inviolability ; which, how- 

* ever, misers and the meaner class of persons are not 

* always voluntarily disposed to grant him.' * * 

* * * O my Friends, we are (in Yorick Sterne's 

* words) but as ** turkeys driven, with a slick and red 

* clout, to the market :" or if some drivers, as they do 

* in Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas in it, the 

* rattle thereof terrifies the boldest ! ' 



PURE REASON. 63 



CHAPTER X. 



PURE REASON. 



It must now be apparent enough that our Professor, as 
above hinted, is a speculative Radical, and of the very 
darkest tinge ; acknowledging, for most part, in the 
solemnities and paraphernalia of civilised Life, which we 
make so much of, nothing but so many Cloth-rags, 
turkey-poles, and ' Bladders with dried Peas.' To linger 
among such speculations, longer than mere Science re- 
quires, a discerning public can have no wish. For our 
purposes the simple fact that such a Naked World is 
possible, nay actually exists (under the Clothed one), 
will be sufficient. Much, therefore, we omit about 

* Kings wrestling naked on the green with Carmen,' and 
the Kings being thrown : ' dissect them with scalpels,' 
says Teufelsdrockh ; * the same viscera, tissues, livers, 

* lights, and other Life-tackle are there : examine their 

* spiritual mechanism ; the same great Need, great Greed, 

* and little Faculty ; nay ten to one but the Carman, who 

* understands draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, 
' something of the laws of unstable and stable equili- 

* br||m, with other branches of waggon-science, and has 

* actually put forth his hand and operated on Nature, is 

* the more cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, 

* their so unspeakable difference ? From Clothes.' Much 
also we shall omit about confusion of Ranks, and Joan 



64 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

and My Lady, and how it would be every where * Hail 
fellow well met/ and Chaos were come again : all which 
to any one that has once fairly pictured out the grand 
mother-idea, Society in a State of Nakedness^ will 
spontaneously suggest itself Should some sceptical 
individual still entertain doubts whether in a World 
without Clothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or even 
Police, could exist, let him turn to the original Volume, 
and view there the boundless Serbonian Bogs of Sans- 
culottism, stretching sour and pestilential : over which 
we have lightly flown ; where not only whole armies but 
whole nations might sink ! If indeed the following 
argument, in its brief rivetting emphasis, be not of itself 
incontrovertible and final : 

* Are we Opossums ; have we natural Pouches, like 

* the Kangaroo ? Or how, without Clothes, could we 

* possess the master-organ, soul's-seat, and true pineal 
' gland of the Body Social : I mean, a Purse ?' 

Nevertheless it is impossible to hate Professor Teu- 
felsdrockh ; at worst, one knows not whether to hate or 
to love him. For though in looking at the fair tapestry 
of human Life, with its royal and even sacred figures, he 
dwells not on the obverse alone, but here chiefly on the 
reverse ; and indeed turns out the rough seams, tatters, 
and manifold thrums of that unsightly wrong-side, with 
an almost diabolic patience and indifference, which must 
have sunk him in the estimation of most readers, — there 
is that within which unspeakably distinguishes him ftpm 
all other past and present Sansculottists. The grand 
unparalleled peculiarity of Teufelsdjockh is, that with all 
this Descendentalism, he combines a Transcendentalism 
no less superlative ; whereby if on the one hand he de- 



PURE REASON. 65 

grade man below most animals, except those jacketted 
Gouda Cows, he, on the other, exalts him beyond the 
visible Heavens, almost to an equality with the gods. 
* To the eye of vulgar Logic,' says he, * what is man ? 

* An omnivorous Biped that wears Breeches. To the 

* eye of Pure Reason what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, 

* and divine Apparition. Round his mysterious Me, 
' there lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of Flesh 

* (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom of Heaven; 

* whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with 
' them in Union and Division ; and sees and fashions for 

* himself a Universe, with azure Starry Spaces, and long 

* Thousands of Years. Deep-hidden is he under that 

* strange Garment ; amid Sounds and Colours and 

* Forms, as it were, swathed in, and inextricably over- 

* shrouded : yet it is skywoven, and worthy of a God. 
' Stands he not thereby in the centre of Immensities, in 
' the conflux of Eternities'? He feels ; power has been 

* given him to Know, to Believe ; nay does not the spirit 
'of Love, free in its celestial primeval brightness, even 

* here, though but for moments, look through 1 Well 
' said Saint Chrysostom, with his lips of gold, " the true 

* Shekinah is Man :" where else is the God's-Pre- 

* SENCE manifested not to our eyes only, but to our 

* hearts, as in our fellow man ?' 

In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high Pla- 
tonic Mysticism of our Author, which is perhaps the 
fundamental element of his nature, bursts forth, as it 
were, in full flood : and, through all the vapour and 
tarnish of what is often so perverse, so mean in his 
exterior and environment, we seem to look into a whole 

inward Sea of Light and Love ; — though, alas, the grim 

7* 



66 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

coppery clouds soon roll together again, and hide it from 
view. 

Such tendency to Mysticism is every where traceable 
in this man ; and indeed, to attentive readers, must have 
been long ago apparent. Nothing that he sees but has 
more than a common meaning, but has two meanings : 
thus, if in the highest Imperial Sceptre and Charlemagne- 
Mantle, as well as in the poorest Ox-goad and Gipsy- 
Blanket, he finds Prose, Decay, Contemptibility ; there 
is in each sort Poetry also, and a reverend Worth. For 
Matter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit, the mani- 
festation of Spirit : were it never so honourable, can it be 
more? The thing Visible, nay the thing Imagined, the 
thing in any way conceived as Visible, what is it but a 
Garment, a Clothing of the higher, celestial Invisible, 
'unimaginable, formless, dark with excess of bright?' 
Under which point of view the following passage, so 
strange in purport, so strange in phrase, seems charac- 
teristic enouffh ; 

' The beginning of all Wisdom is to look fixedly on 
' Clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become 

* transparent. ** The Philosopher," says the wisest of 

* this age, " must station himself in the middle :" how 

* true ! The Philosopher is he to whom the Highest 

* has descended, and the Lowest has mounted up ; who 

* is the equal and kindly brother of all. " 

' Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, 

* whether woven in Arkwright looms, or by the silent 

* Arachnes that weave unrestingly in our Imagination ? 

* Or, on the other hand, what is there that we cannot 

* love ; since all was created by God 1 

* Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a 



PURE REASON. 67 

* Man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank-paper 

* and State-paper Clothes), into the Man himself; and 

* discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate, 

* a more or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus ; yet 

* also an inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the meanest 

* Tinker that sees with eyes !' 

For the rest, as is natural to a man of this kind, he 
deals much in the feeling of Wonder ; insists on the ne- 
cessity and high worth of universal Wonder ; which he 
holds to be the only reasonable temper for the denizen 
of so singular a Planet as ours. ' Wonder,' says he, ' is 

* the basis of Worship : the reign of wonder is perennial, 
' indestructible in Man ; only at certain stages (as the 
' present), it is, for some short season, a reign in partibus 

* infideliumJ' That progress of Science, which is to 
destroy Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensuration 
and Numeration, finds small favour with Teufelsdrockh, 
much as he otherwise venerates these two latter pro- 
cesses. 

' Shall your Science,' exclaims he, ' proceed in the 
' small chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, underground 

* workshop of Logic alone ; and man's mind become an 

* Arithmetical Mill, whereof Memory is the Hopper, and 

* mere Tables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, and 

* Treatises of what you call Political Economy, are the 
' Meal ? And what is that Science, which the scientific 

* head alone, were it screwed off, and (like the Doctor's 
' in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin, to keep it alive, 

* could prosecute without shadow of a heart, — but one 

* other of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for 

* which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) is too 

* noble an organ 1 / 1 mean that Thought without Re- 



68 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

' verence is barren, perhaps poisonous ; at best, dies like 
' Cookery with the day that called it forth ; does not 

* live, like sowing, in successive tilths and wider-spread- 
' ing harvests, bringing food and plenteous increase to 

* all Time.' 

In such wise does Teufelsdrockh deal hits, harder or 
softer according to ability ; yet ever, as we would fain 
persuade ourselves, with charitable intent. Above all, 
that class of ' Logic-choppers, and treble-pipe Scoffers, 
' and professed Enemies to Wonder ; who, in these days, 

* so numerously patrol as night-constables about the 
' Mechanics' Institute of Science, and cackle, like true 

* Old Roman geese and goslings round their Capitol, on 

* any alarm, or on none; nay who often, as illuminated 
' Sceptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, in full 
' daylight, with rattle and lantern, and insist on guiding 

* you and guarding you therewith, though the Sun is 

* shining, and the street populous with mere justice- 
Moving men:' that whole class is inexpressibly weari- 
some to him. Hear with what uncommon animation 
he perorates : 

* The man who cannot wonder, who does not habitu- 

* ally wonder (and worship), were he President of innu- 
' merable Royal Societies, and carried the whole Meca- 
' nique Celeste and Hegel's Philosophy, and the epitome 

* of all Laboratories and Observatories with their results, 

* in his single head, — is but a Pair of Spectacles behind 

* which there is no Eye. Let those who have Eyes look 

* through him, then he may be useful. 

* Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism ; wilt walk 

* through thy world by the sunshine of what thou callest 
' Truth, or even by the Hand-lamp of what I call At- 



PURE REASON. 69 

torney Logic; and "explain" all, " account" for all, 
or believe nothing of it 1 Nay, thou wilt attempt 
laughter ; whoso recognises the unfathomable, all-per- 
vading domain of Mystery, which is everywhere under 
our feet and among our hands ; to whom the Universe 
is an Oracle and Temple, as well as a Kitchen and 
Cattle-stall, — he shall be a (delirious) Mystic ; to him 
thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively proffer thy 
Handlamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he kicks 
his foot through it? — Armer Teufel! Doth not thy 
Cow calve, doth not thy Bull gender 1 Thou thyself, 
wert thou not Born, wilt thou not Die? "Explain" 
me all this, or do one of two things : Retire into private 
places with thy foolish cackle ; or, what were better, 
give it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder is 
done, and God's world all disembellished and prosaic, 
but that thou hitherto art a Dilettante and sandblind 
Pedant.' 



70 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER XI. 



raosPECTivE. 



The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as we 
predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new boundless 
expansions, of a cloudcapt, almost chimerical aspect*, yet 
not without azure loomings in the far distance, and 
streaks as -of an Elysian brightness ; the highly ques- 
tionable purport and promise of which it is becoming 
more and more important for us to ascertain. Is that a 
real Elysian brightness, cries many a timid wayfarer, or 
the reflex of Pandemonian lava? Is it of a truth leading 
us into beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow-burning 
marl of a Hell-on-Earth ? 

Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether delirious 
or inspired, gives an Editor enough to do. Ever higher 
and dizzier are the heights he leads us to ; more piercing, 
all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views and 
glances. For example, this of Nature being not an 
Aggregate but a whole : 

* Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist : " If I take the 

* wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts 

* of the universe, God is there." Thou too, O cultivated 

* reader, who too probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, 
' knowing God only by tradition, knowest thou any cor- 

* ner of the world where at least Force is not ? The 

* drop which thou shakest from thy wet hand, rests not 



PROSPECTIVE. 71 

* where it falls, but to-morrow thou findest it swept away ; 

* already, on the wings of the Northwind, it is nearing 

* the Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate, and 
' not lie motionless ? Thinkest thou there is aught 
' motionless ; without Force, and utterly dead ? 

I * As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to myself: 
I ' That little fire which glows star-like across the dark- 
I * growing (nachtende) moor, where the sooty smith 
I * bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to replace thy 
I * lost horse-shoe, — is it a detached, separated speck, cut 
f * off from the whole Universe ; or indissolubly joined to 

* the whole ? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was (primarily) 

* kindled at the Sun ; is fed by air that circulates from 

* before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the Dogstar; therein, 

* with Iron Force, and Coal Force, and the far stronger 

* Force of Man, are cunning affinities and battles and 
I * victories of Force brought about : it is a little ganglion, 

* or nervous centre, in the great vital system of Immensity. 

* Call it, if thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on 

* the bosom of the All ; whose iron sacrifice, whose iron 

* smoke and influence reach quite through the All ; 
' whose Dingy Priest, not by word, yet by brain and 

* sinew, preaches forth the mystery of Force ; nay 
' preaches forth (exoterically enough) one little textlet 

* from the Gospel of Freedom, the Gospel of Man's 

* Force, commanding, and one day to be all-com? 

* manding. 
* Detached, separated ! I say there is no such separa- 

* tion : nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast aside ; 

* but all, were it only a withered leaf, works together 
' with all ; is borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless 

* flood of Action, and lives through perpetual meta- 



72 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

I * morphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and lost, 

* there are Forces in it and around it, though working in 
' inverse order ; else how could it rot ? Despise not the 

* rag from which man makes Paper, or the litter from 

* which the Earth makes Corn. / Rightly viewed no 

* meanest object is insignificant j ' all objects are as 

* windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into 

* Infinitude itself.' -- "^ 

Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald Smithy- 
Altar, what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and 
whither will they sail with us? 

* AH visible things are Emblems ; what thou seest is 

* not there on its own account ; strictly taken, is not there 

* at all : Matter exists only spiritually, and to represent 

* some Idea, and body it forth. > Hence Clothes, as 
' despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably sig- 

* nificant. Clothes, from the King's mantle downwards, 
' are emblematic, not of want only, but of a manifold 

* cunning Victory over Want. On the other hand, all 

* Emblematic things are properly Clothes, thought-woven 

* or hand-woven : must not the Imagination weave 

* Garments, visible Bodies, wherein the else invisible 

* creations and inspirations of our Reason are, like 

* Spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful ; — the 

* rather if, as we often see, the Hand too aid her, and 

* (by wool Clothes or otherwise) reveal such even to the 

* outward eye 1 

* Men are properly said to be clothed with Authority, 

* clothed with Beauty, with Curses, and the like. Nay, 

* if you consider it, what is Man himself, and his whole 

* terrestrial Life, but an Emblem ; a Clothing or visible 
' Garment for that divine Me of his, cast hither, like a 



PROSPECTIVE. 73 

* light-particle, down from Heaven ? Thus is he said 
' also to be clothed with a Body. 

* Language is called the Garment of Thought : how^ 

* ever, it should rather be, Language is the Flesh-Gar- 

* nient, the Body, of Thought. I said that Imagination 

* wove this Flesh-Garment ; and does she not? Meta- 

* phors are her stuff: examine Language; what, if you 

* except some few primitive elements (of natural sound), 
' what is it all but Metaphors, recognised as such, or no 
' longer recognised ; still fluid and florid, or now solid- 
' grown and colourless? If those same primitive elements 

* are the osseous fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Lan- 
' guage, — then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues 
' and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style you 

* shall in vain seek for : is not your very Attention a 

* StrefcMng-to ? The difference lies here : some styles 
' are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems osseous ; 

* some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten, and dead- 

* looking ; while others again glow in the flush of health 

* and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my own 
' case) not without an apoplectic tendency. Moreover, 

* there are sham Metaphors, which overhanging that same 

* Thought's-Body (best naked), and deceptively bedizen- 

* ing, or bolstering it out, may be called its false stuffings, 

* superfluous show-cloaks {Putz- Mantel), and tawdry 

* woollen rags: whereof he that runs and reads may 
' gather whole hampers, — and burn them.' 

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the reader 
ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical ? 
However, that is not our chief grievance ; the Professor 
continues : 

* Why multiply instances ? It is written the Heavens 

8 



74 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* and the Earth shall fade away like a Vesture ; which 

* indeed they are : the Time-vesture of the Eternal. 

* Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever represents Spirit 

* to Spirit, is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, 

* put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in this 

* one pregnant subject of Clothes, rightly understood, 

* is included all that men have thought, dreamed, done, 
' and been : the whole External Universe and what it holds 

* is but Clothing ; and the essence of all Science lies in 

* the Philosophy op Clothes^ 

Towards these dim infinitely-expanded regions, close- 
bordering on the impalpable Inane, it is not without 
apprehension, and perpetual difficulties, that the Editor 
sees himself journeying and struggling. Till lately a 
cheerful daystar of hope hung before him, in the expected 
Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke ; which daystar, however, 
melts now, not into the red of morning, but into a vague, 
gray half-light, uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk 
of utter darkness. For the last week, these so-called 
Biographical Documents are in his hand* By the kind- 
ness of a Scottish Hamburgh Merchant, whose name, 
known to the whole mercantile world, he must not men- 
tion ; but whose Ironourable courtesy, now and often 
before spontaneously manifested to him, a mere literary 
stranger, he cannot soon forget, — the bulky Weissnichtwo 
Packet, with all its Customhouse seals, foreign hieroglyphs, 
and miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here in 
perfect safety, and free of cost. The reader shall now 
fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, with what 
breathless expectation glanced over ; and, alas, with what 
unquiet disappointment it has, since then, been often 
thrown down, and again taken up. 



PROSPECTIVE. 75 

Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded Letter, 
full of compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, 
dining repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities, pro- 
ceeds to remind us of what we knew well already : that 
however it may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract 
Science originating in the Head ( Verstand) alone, no 
Life-Philosophy [Lebensphilosophie), such as this of 
Clothes pretends to be, which originates equally in the 
Character {Gemuth), and equally speaks thereto, can 
attain its significance till the Character itself is known 
and seen ; ' till the Author's View of the World ( Weltan- 

* sicht), and how he actively and passively came by such 
' view, are clear : in short till a Biography of him has 

* been philosophico-poetically written, and philosophico- 

* poetically read,' Nay, adds he, * were the specula- 
' tive scientific Truth even known, you still, in this in- 

* quiring age, ask yourself, Whence came it, and Why, 

* and How ? — and rest not, till, if no better may be, 

* Fancy have shaped out an answer ; and either in the 

* authentic lineaments of Fact, or the forged ones of 

* Fiction, a complete picture and Genetical History of the 
' Man and his spiritual Endeavour lies before you. But 
' why,' says the Hofrath, and indeed say we, * do I dilate 
^ on the uses of our Teufelsdrockh's Biography? The 
' great Herr Minister von Goethe has penetratingly re- 

* marked that " Man is properly the only object that 

* interests man :" thus I too have noted, that in Weiss- 

* nichtwo our whole conversation is little or nothing 

* else but Biography or Autobiography ; ever humano- 
' anecdotical {mensclilich-anecdotisch). Biography is by 
' nature the most universally profitable, universally 



76 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* pleasant of all things : especially Biography of distin- 
' guished individuals. 

* By this timej mein Verelirtester (my Most Es- 
' teemed)/ continues he, with an eloquence which, unless 
the words be purloined from Teufelsdrockh,or some trick 
of his, as we suspect, is well nigh unaccountable, ' by 
this time you are fairly plunged (vertieft) in that mighty 
forest of Clothes-Philosophy ; and looking round, as 
all readers do, with astonishment enough. Such por- 
tions and passages as you have already mastered, and 
brought to paper, could not but awaken a strange curio- 
sity touching the mind they issued from ; the perhaps 
unparalleled psychical mechanism, which manufactered 
such matter, and emitted it to the light of day. Had 
Teufelsdrockh also a father and mother; did he, at 
one time, wear drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat ? 
Did he ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's 
bosom to his ; looks he also wistfully into the long burial- 
aisle of the Past, where only winds, and their low harsh 
moan, give inarticulate answer? Has he fought duels ; 
— good Heaven ! how did he comport himself when in 
Love ? By what singular stair-steps, in short, and 
subterranean passages, and sloughs of Despair, and 
steep Pisgah hills, has he reached this wonderful pro- 
phetic Hebron (a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where he now 
dwells? 

» To all these natural questions the voice of public 
History is as yet silent. Certain only that he has 
been, and is, a Pilgrim, and Traveller from a far 
Country ; more or less footsore and travel-soiled ; has 
parted with road-companions ; fallen among thieves, 
been poisoned by bad cookery, blistered with bugbites ; 



PROSPECTIVE. 77 

* nevertheless, at every stage (for they have let him 

* pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the whole 
' particulars of his Route, his Weather-observations, 

* the picturesque Sketches he took, though all regularly 
'jotted down (in indelible sympathetic-ink by an in- 

* visible interior Penman), are these nowhere forth- 

* coming 1 Perhaps quite lost : one other leaf of that 
' mighty Volume (of human Memory) left to fly abroad, 
' unprinted, unpublished, unbound up, as waste paper; 

* and rot, the sport of rainy winds ? 

* No, verehrtester Herr Herausgeber, in no wise ! I 

* here, by the unexampled favour you stand in with our 

* Sage, send not a Biography only, but an Autobiogra- 

* phy : at least the materials for such ; wherefrom if I 
' misreckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest in- 

* sight ; and so the whole Philosophy and Philosopher 
' of Clothes stands clear to the wondering eyes of Eng- 
' land, nay thence, through America, through Hindostan, 
'and the antipodal New Holland, finally conquer (ez/i- 
' nehmen) great part of this terrestrial Planet ! ' 

And now let the sympathising reader judge of our 
feeling when, in place of this same Autobiography with 

* fullest insight,' we find — Six considerable Paper-bags, 
carefully sealed, and marked successively, in gilt China- 
ink, with the symbols of the Six southern Zodiacal Signs, 
beginning at Libra ; in the inside of which sealed Bags 
lie miscellaneous masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds 
and Snips, written in Professor Teufelsdrockh's scarce- 
legible cursiv'Schrift ; and treating of all imaginable 
things under the Zodiac and above it, but of his own 
personal history only at rare intervals, and then in the 
most enigmatic manner I 



Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, of, 
as he here speaking in the third person calls himself, 
* the Wanderer/ is not once named. Then again, 
amidst what seems to be a Metaphysico-theological Dis* 
quisition, * Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine,' 
or, ' The continued Possibility of Prophecy,' we shall 
meet with some quite private, not unimportant Biogra- 
phical fact. On certain sheets stand Dreams, authentic 
or not, while the circumjacent waking Actions are omit- 
ted. Anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or time, 
fly loosely on separate slips, like Sibylline leaves. In- 
terspersed also are long purely Autobiographical delinea- 
tions, yet without connexion, without recognisable co- 
herence ; so unimportant, so superfluously minute, they 
almost remind us of * P. P. Clerk of this Parish.' Thus 
does famine of intellicrence alternate with waste. Se- 
lection, order appears to be unknown to the Professor. 
In all Bags the same imbroglio ; only perhaps in the 
Bag Capricorn, and those near it, the confusion a little 
worse confounded. Close by a rather eloquent Oration 
* On receiving the Doctor's-Hat,' lie washbills marked 
bezalilt (settled). His Travels are indicated by the 
Street- Advertisements of the various cities he has visited ; 
of which Street-Advertisements, in most living tongues, 
here is perhaps the completest collection extant. 

So that if the Clothes Volume itself was too like a 
Chaos, we have now instead of the solar Luminary that 
should still it, the airy Limbo which by intermixture will 
farther volatilise and discompose it ! As we shall per- 
haps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these Six Paper- 
Bags in the British Museum, farther description, and all 
vituperation of them, may be spared. Biography or Au- 



PROSPECTIVE. 79 

tpbiography of Teufelsdrockh there is, clearly enough, 
none to be gleaned here : at most some sketchy, shadowy, 
fugitive likeness of him may, by unheard-of efforts, partly 
of intellect, partly of imagination, on the side of Editor 
and of Reader, rise up between them. Only as a 
gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that aqueous-chaotic Volume 
can the contents of the Six Bags hover round us, and 
portions thereof be incorporated with our delineatioQ 
of it. 

Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green 
spectacles) deciphering these unimaginable Documents 
from their perplexed cui'siv-sclirift ; collating them with 
the almost equally unimaginable Volume, which stands 
in legible print. Over such a universal medley of high 
and low, of hot, cold, moist and dry, is he here struggling 
(by union of like with like, which is Method) to build a 
firm Bridge for British travellers. Never perhaps since 
our first Bridge-builders, Sin and Death, built that 
stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, did any 
J*ontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a task as the present 
Editor. For in this Arch too, leading as we humbly 
presume, far otherwards than that grand primeval one, 
the materials are to be fished up from the weltering deep, 
and down from the simmering air, here one mass, there 
another, and cunningly cemented, while the elements 
boil beneath : nor is there any supernatural force to do 
it with ; but simply the Diligence and feeble thinking 
Faculty of an English Editor, endeavouring to evolve 
printed Creation out of a German printed and written 
Chaos, wherein, as he shoots to and fro in it, gathering, 
clutching, piecing the Why to the far-distant Wherefore, 
his whole Faculty and Self are like to be swallowed up. 



80 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, 
does the Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise 
robust health declining; some fraction of his allotted 
natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little but an 
inflamed nervous-system to be looked for. What is the 
use of Health, or of Life, if not to do some work there- 
with? . And what work nobler than transplanting foreign 
Thought into the barren domestic soil ; except indeed 
planting Thought of your own, which the fewest are 
privileged to do ? Wild as it looks, this Philosophy of 
Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises to 
reveal new-coming Eras, the first dim rudiments and 
already-budding germs of a nobler Era, in Universal 
History. Is not such a prize worth some striving ? 
Forward with us, courageous reader ; be it towards 
failure or towards success ! The latter thou sharest 
with us, the former also is not all our own. 



( 81 ) 



BOOK II. 



CHAPTER I. 



GENESIS. 



In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps question- 
able whether from birth and genealogy, how closely 
scrutinised soever, much insight is to be gained. Never- 
theless, as in every phenomenon the Beginning remains 
always the most notable moment ; so, with regard to any 
great man, we rest not till, for our scientific profit or 
not, the whole circumstances of his first appearance in 
this Planet, and what manner of Public Entry he made, 
are with utmost completeness rendered manifest. To 
the Genesis of our Clothes-Philosopher, then, be this 
First Chapter consecrated. Unhappily, indeed, he seems 
to be of quite obscure extraction ; uncertain, we might 
almost say, whether of any : so that this Genesis of his 
can properly be nothing but an Exodus (or transit out 
of Invisibility into Visibility); whereof the preliminary 
portion is nowhere forthcoming. 

* In the village of Entepfuhl,' thus writes he, in the 
Bag Libra, on various Papers, which we arrange with 
difficulty, ' dwelt Andreas Futteral and his wife ; child- 
' less, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now verging 



82 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier Ser- 
geant, and even regimental Schoolmaster under Fre- 
derick the Great ; but now, quitting the halbert and 
ferule for the spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a 
little Orchard, on the produce of which he, Cincin- 
natus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the 
peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties came 
in their season; all which Andreas knew how to sell: 
on evenings he smoked largely, or read (as beseemed 
a regimental Schoolmaster), and talked to neighbours 
that would listen about the victory of Rossbach ; and 
how Fritz the Only {der Einzige) had once with his 
own royal lips spoken to him, had been pleased to say 
when Andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the pass- 
word, " Schweig Du Hund (Peace hound !) " before any 
of his stafF-adjutants could answer. " Das nenn 'ich 
mir einen Konig, there is what I call a King," would 
Andreas exclaim : " but the smoke of Kunersdorf was 
still smarting his eyes." 
* Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by 
the deeds rather than the looks of her now veteran 
Othello, lived not in altogether military subordination ; 
for, as Andreas said, '* the womankind will not drill 
(^wer kann die Weiherchen dressiren) : " nevertheless 
she at heart loved him both for valour and wisdom ; 
to her a Prussian grenadier Sergeant and Regiment's- 
Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero and Cid : 
what you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infinite. 
Nay, was not Andreas in very deed a man of order, 
courage, downrightness (Geradheit) ; that understood 
Biisching's Geography, had been in the victory of 
Rossbach, and left for dead in the camisade of Hoch- 



GENESIS. 83 

* kirch ? The good Gretchen, for all her fretting, 

* watched over him and hovered round him, as only a 
true housemother can : assiduously she cooked and 
sevi^ed and scoured for him ; so that not only his old 
regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole 
habitation and environment, where on pegs of honour 
they hung, looked ever trim and gay : a roomy painted 
Cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and forest-trees, ever- 
greens and honeysuckles ; rising many-coloured from 
amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling in through 
the very windows ; under its long projecting eaves 
nothing but garden-tools in methodic piles (to screen 
them from rain), and seats, where, especially on sum- 
mer nights, a King might have wished to sit and 
smoke, and call it his. Such a Baiiergut (Copyhold) 
had Gretchen given her veteran ; whose sinewy arms, 
and long-disused gardening talent, had made it what 
you saw. 

* Into this umbrageous Man's-nest, one meek yellow 
evening or dusk, when the Sun, hidden indeed from 
terrestrial Enlepfuhl, did nevertheless journey visible 
and radiant along the celestial Balance {Libra), it was 
that a Stranger of reverend aspect entered ; and, with 
grave salutation, stood before the two rather astonished 
housemates. He was close-muffled in a wide mantle j 
which without farther parley unfolding, he deposited 
therefrom what seemed some Basket, overhung with 
green Persian silk ; saying only : Ihr liehen Leute, 
hier bringe ein unschdtzbares Verleihen ; nehmt es in 
aller Acht, sorgfdltigst benutzt es : mit hohem Lohriy 
oder wohl mit schiverem Zinsen^ wird's einst zuruck- 
gef orderly " Good Christian people, here lies for you 



84 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

an invaluable Loan ; take all heed thereof, in all 
carefulness employ it : with high recompense, or else 
with heavy penalty, will it one day be required back." 
Uttering which singular words, in a clear, bell-like, 
for ever memorable tone, the Stranger gracefully with- 
drew ; and before Andreas or his wife gazing in ex- 
pectant wonder, had time to fashion either question or 
answer, was clean gone. Neither out of doors could 
aught of him be seen or heard ; he had vanished in the 
thickets, in the dusk ; the Orchard-gate stood quietly 
closed : the Stranger was gone once and always. So 
sudden had the whole transaction been, in the autumn 
stillness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that the Fut- 
terals could have fancied it all a trick of Imagination, 
or some visit from an authentic Spirit. Only that the 
green silk Basket, such as neither Imagination nor 
authentic Spirits are wont to carry, still stood visible 
and tangible on their little parlour-table. Towards 
this the astonished couple, now with lit candle, hastily 
turned their attention. Lifting the green veil, to see 
what invaluable it hid, they descried there, amid down 
and rich white wrappages, no Pitt Diamond or Haps- 
burg Regalia, but in the softest sleep, a little red- 
coloured Infant ! Beside it, lay a roll of gold Fried- 
richs, the exact amount of which was never publicly 
known ; also a Taufschein (baptismal certificate), 
wherein unfortunately nothing but the Name was 
decipherable ; other document or indication none 
whatever. 

* To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then and 
always thenceforth. Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on the 
morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of any such 



GENESIS. 85 

figure as the Stranger ; nor could the Traveller, who 
had passed through the neighbouring Town in coach- 
and-four, be connected with this Apparition, except in 
the way of gratuitous surmise. Meanwhile, for An- 
dreas and his wife, the grand practical problem was : 
What to do with this little sleeping red-coloured In- 
fant ? Amid amazements and curiosities, which had 
to die away without external satisfying, they resolved, 
as in such circumstances charitable prudent people 
needs must, on nursing it, though with spoon-meat, 
into whiteness, and if possible into manhood. The 
Heavens smiled on their endeavour : thus has that same 
mysterious Individual ever since had a status for him- 
self, in this visible Universe, some modicum of victual 
and lodging and parade-ground ; and now expanded 
in bulk, faculty, and knowledge of good and evil, he, 
as Herii Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, professes or is 
ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without effect, 
in the new University of Weissnichtwo, the new 
Science of Things in General.' 
Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we should 
think he well might, that these facts, first communicated, 
by the good Gretchen Futteral, in his twelfth year, 
' produced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite inde- 

* lible impression. Who this reverend Personage,' he 
says, * that glided into the Orchard Cottage when the 

* Sun was in Libra, and then, as on spirit's wings, 
'glided out again, might be ? An inexpressible desire, 

* full of love and of sadness, has often since struggled 

* within me to shape an answer. Ever, in my distresses 
' and my loneliness, has Fantasy turned, full of longing 
' (sehnsuchtsvoU) , to that unknown Father, who per- 

9 



86 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* haps far from me, perhaps near, either way invisible, 

* might have taken me to his paternal bosom, there to lie 
' screened from many a woe. Thou beloved Father, 

* dost thou still, shut out from me only by thin penetrable 

* curtains of earthly Space, wend to and fro among the 

* crowd of the living ? Or art thou hidden by those far 

* thicker curtains of the Everlasting Night, or rather of 
' the Everlasting Day, through which my mortal eye 

* and outstretched arms need not strive to reach ? 

* Alas ! I know not, and in vain vex myself to know. 

* More than once, heart-deluded, have 1 taken for thee 
' this and the other noble-looking Stranger ; and ap- 

* proached him wistfully, with infinite regard : but he 

* too must repel me, he too was not thou. 

* And yet, O Man born of Woman,' cries the Auto- 
biographer, with one of his sudden whirls, ' wherein is 

* my case peculiar ? Hadst thou, any more than I, a 
'Father whom thou knowest? The Andreas and 

* Gretchen, or the Adam and Eve, who led thee into 

* Life, and for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, 
'whom thou namest Father and Mother; these were, 

* like mine, but thy nursing-father and nursing-mother: 
' thy true Beginning and Father is in Heaven, whom 

* with the bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but only 

* with the spiritual.' 

* The little green veil,' adds he, among much similar 
moralising, and embroiled discoursing, 'I yet keep; 

* still more inseparably the Name, Diogenes Teufels- 

* drockh. From the veil can nothing be inferred : a 

* piece of now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands 

* of others. On the Name I have many times medi- 

* tated and conjectured ; but neither in this lay there 



GENESIS. 87 

* any clue. That it was my unknown Father's name I 

* must hesitate to believe. To no purpose have I 
' searched through all the Herald's Books, in and with- 

* out the German Empire, and through all manner of 

* Subscriber-Lists [Prdnumerunten) ^ Militia -Rolls, and 
' other Name-catalogues ; extraordinary names as we 
' have in Germany, the name Teufelsdrockh, except as 

* appended to my own person, nowhere occurs. Again, 
' what may the unchristian rather than Christian " Dio- 
' genes" mean? Did that reverend Basket-bearer in- 

* tend, by such designation, to shadow forth my future 
' destiny, or his own present malign humour 1 Per- 
' haps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred 
' Parent, who like an Ostrich must leave thy ill-starred 
' offspring to be hatched into self-support by the mere 

* sky-influences of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have 

* been a smooth one 1 Beset by Misfortune thou doubt- 

* less hast been ; or indeed by the worst figure of Misfor- 
' tune, by Misconduct. Often have I fancied how, in 

* thy hard life-battle, thou wert shot at and slung at, 
^ wounded, hand-fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten and 
' bedevilled, by the Time-Spirit {Zeitgeist) in thyself 

* and others, till the good soul first given thee was seared 
' into grim rage ; and thou hadst nothing for it but to 

* leave in me an indignant appeal to the Future, and 

* living speaking Protest against the Devil, as that same 
' Spirit not of the Time only, but of Time itself, is well 

* named ! Which Appeal and Protest, may I now mo- 
' destly add, was not perhaps quite lost in air. 

' For indeed as Walter Shandy often insisted, there 

* is much, nay almost all, in Names. The name is the 

* earliest Garment you wrap round the Earth-visiting 



88 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Me ; to which it thenceforth cleaves, more tenaciously 
(for there are Names tliat have lasted nigh thirty cen- 
turies) than the very skin. And now from vi'ithout, 
what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even 
to the centre ; especially in those plastic first-times, 
when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the in- 
visible seed-grain will grow to be an all over-shadowing 
tree ! Names ? Could I unfold the influence of Names, 
which are the most important of all Clothings, I were 
a second greater Trismegistus. Not only all common 
Speech, but Science, Poetry itself is no other, if thou 
consider it, than a right Naming. Adam's first task 
was giving names to natural Appearances : what is 
ours still but a continuation of the same ; be the Ap- 
pearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, stars, 
or starry movements (as in Science) ; or (as in 
Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, God-attributes, 
Gods ? — In a very plain sense the Proverb says, Call 
one a thief and he will steal; in an almost similar 
sense, may we not perhaps say, Call one Diogenes 
Teufelsdrockh and he will open the Philosophy of 
Clothes.^ 

' Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all 
ignorant of his Why, his How or Whereabout, was 
opening his eyes to the kind Light ; sprawling out his 
ten fingers and toes ; listening, tasting, feeling ; in a 
word, by all his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth 
Sense of Hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, 
spiritual, half awakened Senses, endeavouring daily to 
acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange 
Universe where he had arrived, be his task therein 
what it might. Infinite was his progress ; thus in 



GENESIS. S9 

' some fifteen months, he could perform the miracle of 

* —Speech ! To breed a fresh Soul, is it not like 

* brooding a fresh (celestial) Egg; wherein as yet all is 
' formless, powerless ; yet by degrees organic elements 
' and fibres shoot through the watery albumen ; and out 

* of vague Sensation, grows Thought, grows Fantasy 
' and Force, and we have Philosophies, Dynasties, nay 

* Poetries ^*^nd Religions ! 

* Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for by 

* such dirisinutive had they in their fondness named him, 
' travelled forward to those high consummations, by 
' quicl^ yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid vain 
' talk/ an,d moreover keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, 
' gave out that he was a grand-nephew ; the orphan of 
' some sister's daughter, suddenly deceased, in Andreas's 

* distant Prussian birth-land ; of whom, as of her indi- 
' gent sorrowing widower, little enough was known at 
' :^iitepfuhl. Heedless of all which, the Nurseling took 
' to his spoon-meat, and throve. I have heard him 
' noted as a still infant, that kept his mind much to 

* himself; above all, that seldom or never cried. He 

* already felt that time was precious ; that he had 
^ other work cut out for him than whimpering.' 

Such, after utmost painful search and collation among 
these miscellaneous Paper-masses, is all the notice we 
can gather of Herr Teufelsdrockh's genealogy. More 
imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few readers 
than to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and 
more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep under^ 
currents of roguish whim, for the present stands pledged 
in honour, so we will not doubt him : but seems it not 
9* 



90 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

conceivable that, by the ' good Gretchen Futteral,' or 
some other perhaps interested party, he has himself 
been deceived? Should these Sheets, translated or not, 
ever reach the Entepfuhl Circulating-Library, some cul- 
tivated native of that district might feel called to afford 
explanation. Nay, since Books, like invisible scouts, 
permeate the whole habitable globe, and Tombuctoo 
itself is not safe from British Literature, may not some 
Copy find out even the mysterous Basket-bearing stran- 
ger, who in a state of extreme senility perhaps still 
exists; and gently force even him to disclose himself; to 
claim openly a son, in whom any father may feel pride ? 



IDYLLIC. 91 



CHAPTER II. 

IDYLLIC. 

* Happy season of Childhood ! ' exclaims Teufels- 
drockh : ' Kind Nature, that art to all a bountiful 

* mother ; that visitest the poor man's hut with auroral 

* radiance ; and for thy Nurseling hast provided a soft 

* swathing of Love and infinite Hope, wherein he waxes 
' and slumbers, danced- round (umgdukelt) by sweetest 

* Dreams ! If the paternal Cottage still shuts us in, its 

* roof still screens us ; with a Father we have as yet a 

* prophet, priest and king, and an Obedience that makes 

* us Free. The young spirit has awakened out of Eter- 

* nity, and knows not what we mean by Time; as yet 
' Time is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful sunlit 

* ocean ; years to the child are as ages : ah ! the secret 

* of Vicissitude, of that slower or quicker decay and 

* ceaseless downrushing of the universal World-fabric, 

* from the granite mountain to the man or day-moth, is 

* yet unknown ; and in a motionless Universe, we taste, 

* what afterwards in this quick-whirling Universe is for- 
' ever denied us, the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair 

* Child, for thy long rough journey is at hand ! A little 
' while, and thou too shalt sleep no more, but thy very 

* dreams shall be mimic battles ; thou too, with old 

* Arnauld, must say in stern patience : " Rest ? Rest ? 

* Shall I not have all Eternity to rest in ?" Celestial 



92 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* Nepenthe ! though a Pyrrhus conquer empires, and an 
' Alexander sack the world, he finds thee not; and thou 

* hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eye- 

* lids, on the heart of every mother's child. For as yet, 

* sleep and waking are one : the fair Life-garden rustles 

* infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and 

* the budding of Hope ; which budding, if in youth, too 
' frostnipt, it grows to flowers, will in manhood yield no 

* fruit, but a prickly, bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which 

* the fewest can find the kernel.' 

In such rose-coloured light does our Professor, as 
Poets are wont, look back on his childhood ; the histo- 
rical details of which (to say nothing of much other 
vague oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells on, with 
an almost wearisome minuteness. We hear of Entepfuhl 
standing * in trustful derangement' among the woody 
slopes; the paternal Orchard flanking it as extreme out- 
post from below ; the little Kuhbach gushing kindly by, 
among beech-rows, through river after river, into the 
Donau, into the Black Sea, into the Atmosphere and 
Universe ; and how ' the brave old Linden,' stretching 
like a parasol of twenty ells in radius, overtopping all 
other rows and clumps, towered up from the central 
Agora and Campus Martius of the Village, like its 
Sacred Tree; and how the old men sat talking under its 
shadow (Gneschen often greedily listening), and the 
wearied labourers reclined, and the unwearied children 
sported, and the young men and maidens often danced 
to flute-music. ' Glorious summer twilights,' cries Teuf- 
elsdrockh, ' when the Sun like a proud Conqueror and 
' Imperial Taskmaster turned his back, with his gold- 

* purple emblazonry, and all his fire-clad bodyguard (of 



IDYLLIC. 93 

* Prismatic Colours) ; and the tired brick makers of this 
' clay Earth might steal a little frolic, and those few 

* meek Stars would not tell of them !' 

Then have we long details of the Weinlesen (Vintage), 
the Harvest-Home, Christmas, and so fortii : with a 
whole cycle of the Entepfuhl Children's-games, differing 
apparently by mere superficial shades from those of 
other countries. Concerning all which, we shall here, 
for obvious reasons, say nothing. What cares the world 
for our as yet miniature Philosopher's achievements under 
that * brave old Linden ?' Or even where is the use of 
such practical reflections as the following ? * In all the 
' sports of Children, were it only in their wanton break- 

* ages and defacements, you shall discern a creative 

* instinct [Schajfenden Trich) : the Mankin feels that he 

* is a born Man, that his vocation is to Work. The 

* choicest present you can make him is a Tool ; be it 

* knife or pengun, for construction or for destruction ; 

* either way it is for Work, for Change. In gregarious 
' sports of skill or strength, the Boy trains himself to 

* Co-operation, for war or peace, as governor or go- 
' verned : the little Maid again, provident of her domestic 

* destiny, takes with preference to Dolls.' 

Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, consi- 
dering who it is that relates it : ' My first short-clothes 

* were of yellow serge ; or rather, I should say, my first 
' short cloth, for the vesture was one and indivisible, 

* reaching from neck to ankle, a mere body with four 

* limbs: of which fashion how little could I then divine 

* the architectural, how much less the moral signi- 

* ficance ! ' 

More graceful is the following little picture : * On fine 



94 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* evenings I was wont to carry forth my supper (bread- 
' crumb boiled in milk), and eat it out of doors. On trie 
' coping of the Orchard-wall, which I could reach by 

* climbing, or still more easily if Father Andreas would 

* set up the pruning-ladder, my porringer was placed : 
' there, manv a sunset, have I, lookingr at the distant 

* western Mountains, consumed, not without relish, my 

* evening meal. Those hues of gold and azure, that hush 

* of World's expectation as Day died, were still a He- 

* brew Speech for me ; nevertheless I was looking at the 

* fair illuminated Letters, and had an eye for their 

* gilding.' 

With ' the little one's friendship for cattle and poultry ' 
we shall not much intermeddle. It may be that hereby 
he acquired a * certain deeper sympathy with animated 

* Nature :' but when, we would ask, saw any man, in a 
collection of Biographical Documents, such a piece as 
this : * Impressive enough {hedeuhingsvoU) was it to 

* hear, in early morning, the Swineherd's horn ; and 

* know that so many hungry happy quadrupeds were, on 

* all sides, starting in hot haste to join him, for breakfast 
' on the Heath. Or to see them, at eventide, all march- 

* ing in again, with short squeak, almost in military 
' order ; and each, topographically correct, trotting off in 
' succession to the right or left, through its own lane, to 

* its own dwelling; till old Kunz, at the Village-head, 
' now left alone, blew his last blast, and retired for the 

* night. We are wont to love the Hog chiefly in the 

* form of Ham ; yet did not these bristly thick-skinned 

* beings here manifest intelligence, perhaps humour of 

* character ; at any rate, a touching, trustful submissive- 

* ness to Man, — who were he but a Swineherd, in darned 



IDYLLIC. 95 

* gabardine, and leather breeches more resembling slate 
' or discoloured tin breeches, is still the Hierarch of this 
' lower world ? ' 

It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an 
infant of genius is quite the same as any other infant, 
only that certain surprisingly favorable influences ac- 
company him through life, especially through childhood, 
and expand him, while others lie close-folded and con- 
tinue dunces. Herein, say they, consists the whole 
difference between an inspired Prophet and a double- 
barrelled Game-preserver : the inner man of the one has 
been fostered into generous development ; that of the 
other, crushed down perhaps by vigour of animal diges- 
tion, and the like, has exuded and evaporated, or at best 
sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at the bottom of his 
stomach. * With which opinion,' cries Teufelsdrockh, 

* I should as soon agree as with this other, that an acorn 

* might, by favourable or unfavourable influences of soil 

* and climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the cabbage- 

* seed into an oak. 

' Nevertheless,' continues he, ' I too acknowledge the 

* all but omnipotence of early culture and nurture ; 
' hereby we have either a doddered dwarf bush, or a 

* high-towering, wide-shadowing tree ; either a sick yellow 

* cabbage, or an edible, luxuriant, green one. Of a truth, 
' it is the duty of all men, especially of all philosophers, 
' to note down with accuracy the characteristic circum- 

* stances of their Education, what furthered, what hin- 
' dered, what in any way modified it : to which duty, 

* nowadays so pressing for many a German Auto- 

* biographer, I also zealously address myself.' — -Thou 
rogue ! Is it by short-clothes of yellow serge, and swine- 



96 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

herd horns, that an infant of genius is educated ? And 
yet, as usual, it ever remains doubtful whether he is 
laughing in his sleeve at these Autobiographical times 
of ours, or writing from the abundance of his own fond 
ineptitude. For he continues : * If among the ever- 
streaming currents of Sights, Plearings, Feelings for 
Pain or Pleasure, whereby, as in a Magic Hall, young 
Gneschen went about environed, I might venture to 
select and specify, perhaps these following were also of 
the number : 

' Doubtless, as childish sports call forth Intellect, 
Activity, so the young creature's Imagination was 
stirred up, and a Historical tendency given him by the 
narrative habits of Father Andreas; who, with his 
battle-reminiscences, and grey austere, yet hearty 
patriarchal aspect, could not but appear another Ulysses 
and ** Much-enduring Man." Eagerly I hung upon 
his tales, when listening neighbours enlivened the 
hearth : from these perils and these travels, wild and 
far almost as Hades itself, a dim world of Adven- 
ture expanded itself within me. Incredible also was 
the knowledge I acquired in standing by the Old Men 
under the Linden tree : the whole of Immensity was 
yet new to me ; and had not these reverend seniors, 
talkative enough, been employed in partial surveys 
thereof for nigh fourscore years ? With amazement I 
began to discover that Entepfuhl stood in the middle 
of a Country, of a World ; that there was such a thing 
as History, as Biography ; to which I also, one day, by 
hand and tongue, might contribute. 

* In a like sense worked the Posttvagen (Stage-Coach), 
which slow-rolling under its mountains of men and 



IDYLLIC. 97 

luggage, wended through our Village: northwards, 
truly, in the dead of night ; yet southwards visibly at 
eventide. Not till my eighth year, did I reflect that 
this Postwagen could be other than some terrestrial 
Moon, rising and setting by mere Law of Nature, like 
the heavenly one ; that it came on made highways, 
from far cities towards far cities ; weaving them like a 
monstrous shuttle into closer and closer union. It was 
then that, independently of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell^ I 
made this not quite insignificant reflection (so true also 
in spiritual things) : Any road, this simple Entepfuhl 
road J will lead you to the end of the World! 

' Why mention our Swallows, which, out of far Africa 
as I learned, threading their way over seas and moun- 
tains, corporate cities and belligerent nations, yearly 
found themselves, with the month of May, snug-lodged 
in our Cottage Lobby ? The hospitable Father (for 
cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little bracket, plumb 
under their nest : there they built, and caught flies, and 
twittered, and bred ; and all, I chiefly, from the heart 
loved them. Bright, nimble creatures, who taught you 
the mason-craft ; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic 
incorporation, almost social police ? For if, by ill chance, 
and when time pressed, your House fell, have I not 
seen five neighbourly Helpers appear next day ; and 
swashing to and fro, with animated, loud, long-drawn 
chirpings, and activity almost super-hirundine, com- 
plete it again before nightfall ? 

* But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl 
child's-culture, where as in a funnel its manifold in- 
fluences were concentrated and simultaneously poured 
down on us, was the annual Cattle-fair. Here, assembling 
10 



98 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

' from all the four winds, came the elements of an un- 

* speakable hurly-burly. Nutbrown maids and nutbrown 

* men, all clear-washed, loud-laughing, bedizened and 

* be-ribanded ; who came for dancing, for treating, and 

* if possible, for happiness. Topbooted Graziers from 
' the North ; Swiss Brokers, Italian Drovers, also top- 

* booted, from the South ; these with their subalterns in 
' leather jerkins, leather scull-caps, and long ox-goads ; 
' shouting in half-articulate speech, amid the inarticulate 

* barking and bellowing. Apart stood Potters from far 
' Saxony, with their crockery in fair rows ; Niirnberg 

* Pedlars, in booths that to me seemed richer than Ormuz 
'bazaars; Showmen from the Lago Maggiore ; detach- 
' ments of the Wiener Schub (Offscourings of Vienna) 
' vociferously superintending games of chance. Ballad- 

* singers brayed. Auctioneers grew hoarse ; cheap New 
' Wine (heuriger) flowed like water, still worse con- 
' founding the confusion ; and high over all, vaulted, in 
' ground-and-lofty tumbling, a parti-coloured Merry An- 
' drew, like the genius of the place and of Life itself. 

' Thus encircled by the mystery of Existence ; under 

* the deep heavenly Firmament ; waited on by the four 

* golden Seasons, with their vicissitudes of contribution, 

* for even grim Winter, brought its skating-matches and 

* shooting-matches, its snovi^-storms and Christmas carols, 
' — did the Child sit and learn. These things were the 

* Alphabet, whereby in after-time he was to syllable and 

* partly read the grand Volume of the World : what mat- 
' ters it whether such Alphabet be in large gilt letters or 

* in smaU ungilt ones, so you have an eye to read it ? 

* For Gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of looking 



IDYLLIC. 



99 



* thereon was a blessedness that gilded all : his existence 

* was a bright, soft element of Joy ; out of which, as in 

* Prospero's Island, wonder after wonder bodied itself 

* forth, to teach by charming. 

* Nevertheless I were but a vain dreamer to say, that even 
' then my felicity was perfect. I had, once for all, come 
' down from Heaven into the Earth. Among the rain- 

* bow colours that glowed on my horizon, lay even in 

* childhood a dark ring of Care, as yet no thicker than a 

* thread, and often quite overshone ; yet always it reap- 

* peared, nay, ever waxing broader and broader ; till in 

* after-years it almost overshadowed my whole canopy, 

* and threatened to engulf me in final night. It was the 
' ring of Necessity, whereby we are all begirt; happy he 

* for whom a kind heavenly Sun brightens it into a ring 

* of Duty, and plays round it with beautiful prismatic 

* diffractions ; yet ever, as basis and as bourne for our 

* whole being, it is there. 

* For the first few years of our terrestrial Apprentice- 

* ship, we have not much work to do; but, boarded and 
' lodged gratis, are set down mostly to look about us over 

* the workshop, and see others work, till we have under- 

* stood the tools a little, and can handle this and that. If 
' good Passivity alone, and not good Passivity and good 
' Activity together, were the thing wanted, then was my 

* early position favourable beyond the most. In all that 

* respects openness of Sense, affectionate Temper, ingen- 

* uous Curiosity, and the fostering of these, what more 

* could I have wished ? On the other side, however, 

* things went not so well. My Active Power ( Tliathraft) 

* was unfavourably hemmed in ; of which misfortune 

* how many traces yet abide with me ! In an orderly 



100 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* house, where the litter of children's sports is hateful 

* enough, your training is too stoical ; rather to bear and 
' forbear than to make and do. I was forbid much : 

* wishes in any measure bold I had to renounce ; every 

* where a strait bond of Obedience inflexibly held me 

* down. Thus already Freewill often came in painful 

* collision with Necessity ; so that my tears flowed, and 

* at seasons the Child itself might taste that root of bit- 

* terness, wherewith the whole fruitage of our life is 

* mingled and tempered. 

* In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it was be- 

* yond measure safer to err by excess than by defect. 

* Obedience is our universal duty and destiny ; wherein 

* whoso will not bend must break : too early and too 

* thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that Would, 

* in this world of ours, is as mere zero to Should, and 

* for most part as the smallest of fractions even to Shall. 

* Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly Discretion, 

* nay, of Morality itself. Let me not quarrel with my 

* upbringing ! It was rigorous, too frugal, compressively 

* secluded, every way unscientific : yet in that very strict- 
' ness and domestic solicitude might there not lie the root 
' of deeper earnestness, of the stem from which all noble 

* fruit must grow ? Above all, how unskilful soever, it 

* was loving, it was well meant, honest ; whereby every 

* deficiency was helped. My kind Mother, for as such 

* I must ever love the good Gretchen, did me one aito- 

* gather invaluable service : she taught me, less indeed 

* by word than by act and daily reverent look and habi- 

* tude, her own simple version of the Christian Faith. 

* Andreas, too, attended Church ; yet more like a parade- 

* duty, for which he in the other world expected pay 



IDYLLIC. 101 

* with arrears, — as, I trust, he has received : but my 

* Mother, with a true woman's heart, and fine though 

* uncultivated sense, was in the strictest acceptation Re- 

* ligious. How indestructibly the Good grows, and pro- 

* pagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of 
' Evil ! The highest whom I knew on Earth I here saw 

* bowed down, with awe unspeakable, before a Higher 

* in Heaven : such things, especially in infancy, reach 

* inwards to the very core of your being ; mysteriously 

* does a Holy of Holies build itself into visibility in the 
' mysterious deeps ; and Reverence, the divinest in man, 

* springs forth undying from its mean envelopment of 

* Fear. Wouldst thou rather be a peasant's son that 
' knew, were it never so rudely, there was a God in 

* Heaven and in Man ; or a duke's son that only knew 

* there were two and thirty quarters on the family- 

* coach ? ' 

To which last question we must answer : Beware, O 
Teufelsdrockh, of spiritual pride ! 



10* 



102 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER III. 



PEDAGOGY. 



Hitherto we see young Gneschen, in his indivisible 
case of yellow serge, borne forward mostly on the arms 
of kind Nature alone ; seated, indeed, and much to his 
mind, in the terrestrial workshop ; but (except his soft 
hazel eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed with a 
still intelligence) called upon for little voluntary move- 
ment there. Hitherto accordingly his aspect is rather 
generic, that of an incipient Philosopher and Poet in the 
abstract : perhaps it would puzzle Herr Heuschrecke 
himself to say wherein the special Doctrine of Clothes 
is as yet foreshadowed or betokened. For with Gnes- 
chen, as with others, the Man may indeed stand pictured 
in the Boy (at least all the pigments are there) ; yet 
only some half of the Man stands in the Child, or young 
Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, not his Active. 
The more impatient are we to discover what figure he 
cuts in this latter capacity ; how when, to use his own 
words, ' he understands the tools a little, and can handle 
this or that,' he will proceed to handle it. 

Here, however, may be the place to state that, in 
much of our Philosopher's history, there is something 
of an almost Hindoo character : nay, perhaps in that so 
well fostered and every-way excellent ' Passivity' of his, 
which, with no free development of the antagonist 



# 



PEDAGOGY. 103 

Activity, distinguislied his childhood, we may detect the 
rudiments of much that, in after-days, and still in these 
present days, astonishes the world. For the shallow- 
sighted Teufelsdrockh is oftenest a man without Acti- 
vity of any kind, a No-man ; for the deep-sighted, again, 
a man with Activity almost superabundant, yet so 
spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, that no mortal can 
foresee its explosions, or even when it has exploded, so 
much as ascertain its significance. A dangerous, difficult 
temper for the modern European : above all, disadvan- 
tageous in the hero of a Biography ! Now as heretofore 
it will behove the Editor of these pages, were it never so 
unsuccessfully, to do his endeavour. 

Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which a 
man, especially a man of letters, gets to handle, are his 
Class-books. On this portion of his History Teufels- 
drockh looks down professedly as indifferent. Reading he 

* cannot remember ever to have learned ; ' so perhaps had 
it by nature. He says generally : ' of the insignificant 

* portion of my education, which depended on Schools, 

* there need almost no notice be taken. I learned what 

* others learn ; and kept it stored by in a corner of my 

* head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. My School- 
' master, a downbent, brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, 

* as others of that guild are, did little for me, except 

* discover that he could do little : he, good soul, pro- 
' nounced me a genius, fit for the learned professions ; 
' and that I must be sent to the Gymnasium, and one 

* day to the University. Meanwhile, what printed thing 

* soever I could meet with I read. My very copper 
' pocket-money I laid out on stall-literature : which, as 

* it accumulated, I with my own hands sewed into volumes. 



104 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* By this means was the young head furnished with a 

* considerable miscellany of things and shadows ofthings : 

* History in authentic fragments lay mingled with Fabu- 
' lous chimeras, wherein also was reality ; and the whole 
' not as dead stuff, but as living pabulum, tolerably 
' nutritive for a mind as yet so peptic' 

That the Entepfuhl Schoolmaster judged well we now 
know. Indeed, already in the youthful Gneschen, with 
all his outward stillness, there may have been manifest 
an inward vivacity that promised much ; symptoms of a 
spirit singularly open, thoughtful, almost poetical. Thus, 
to say nothing of his Suppers on the Orchard-wall, and 
other phenomena of that earlier period, have many readers 
of these pages stumbled, in their twelfth year, on such 
reflections as the following ? * It struck me much as I 

* sat by the Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and watched 

* it flowing, gurgling, to think how this same streamlet 
' had flowed and gurgled, through all changes of weather 

* and of fortune, from beyond the earliest date of History. 

* Yes, probably, on the morning when Joshua forded 

* Jordan : even as at the mid-day when Caesar, doubtless 

* with difficulty, swam the Nile, yet kept his Com- 

* mentaries dry, — this little Kuhbach, assiduous as Tiber, 

* Eurotas or Siloa, was murmuring on across the wilder- 

* ness, as yet unnamed, unseen : here, too, as in the 
' Euphrates and the Ganges, is a Vein or Veinlet of the 
' grand World-circulation of Waters, which, with its at- 

* mospheric Arteries, has lasted and lasts simply with 
» the World. Thou fool ! Nature alone is antique, and 

* the oldest Art a mushroom ; that idle crag thou sittest 

* on is six thousand years of age.' In which little thought, 
as in a little fountain, may there not lie the beginning 



i 



PEDAGOGY. 



105 



of those well-nigh unutterable meditations on the gran- 
deur and mystery of Time, and its relation to Eternity, 
which play such a part in this Philosophy of Clothes 1 

Over his Gymnasic and Academic years the Professor 
by no means lingers so lyrical and joyful as over his 
childhood. Green sunny tracts there are still ; but in- 
tersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and there stag- 
nating into sour marshes of discontent. ' With my first 
view of the Hinterschlag Gymnasium,' writes he, ' my 
evil days began. Well do I still remember the red sunny 
Whitsuntide morning, when trotting full of hope, by 
the side of Father Andreas, I entered the main street 
of the place, and saw its steeple-clock (then striking 
Eight) and Schuldthurm (Jail), and the aproned or 
disaproned Burghers moving in to breakfast : a little 
dog, in mad terror, was rushing past ; for some human 
imps had tied a tin kettle to its tail ; thus did the ago- 
nised creature, loud-jingling, career through the whole 
length of the Burough, and become notable enough. 
Fit emblem of many a Conquering Hero, to whom Fate 
(wedding Fantasy to Sense, as it often elsewhere does) 
has malignantly appended a tin kettle of Ambition, to 
chase him on ; which, the faster he runs, urges him the 
faster, the more loudly and more foolishly ! Fit emblem 
also of much that awaited myself, in that mischievous 
Den ; as in the World, whereof it was a portion and 
epitome 1 

* Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were hidden 
in the distance : I was among strangers, harshly, at 
best indifferently, disposed towards me ; the young 
heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned and alone.' 
His schoolfellows, as is usual, persecuted him ; * They 



106 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* were Boys,' he says, * mostly rude Boys, and obeyed 
' the impulse of rude Nature, which bids the deerherd 

* fall upon any stricken hart, the duck-flock put to 
' death any broken-winged brother or sister, and on all 

* hands the strong tyrannise over the weak.' He admits 
that though * perhaps in an unusual degree morally 
courageous/ he succeeded ill in battle, and would fain 
have avoided it ; a result as would appear, owing less to 
his small personal stature (for in passionate seasons, he 
was ' incredibly nimble'), than to his ' virtuous princi- 
' pies :' ' if it was disgraceful to be beaten,' says he, ' it 

* vi^as only a shade less disgraceful to have so much as 
' fought ; thus was I drawn two ways at once, and in this 
' important element of school-history, the war-element, 

* had little but sorrow.' On the whole, that same excellent 

* Passivity,' so notable in Teufelsdrockh's childhood, is here 
visibly enough again getting nourishment. ' He wept 

* often ; indeed to such a degree that he was nicknamed 

* Der Weinende (the Tearful), which epithet, till towards 

* his thirteenth year, was indeed not quite unmerited. Only 

* at rare intervals did the young soul burst forth into fire- 

* eyed rage, and, with a Stormfulness (Ungestum) under 

* which the boldest quailed, assert that he too had Rights 

* of Man, or at least of Mankin.' In all which, who does 
not discern a fine flower-tree and cinnamon-tree (of 
genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reedgrass, and 
ignoble shrubs; and forced, if it would live, to strug- 
gle upwards only, and not outwards ; into a height quite 
sickly, and disproportioned to its breadth? 

We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were 
' mechanically' taught; Hebrewscarce even mechanically ; 
much else which they called History, Cosmography, 



PEDAGOGY. 107 

Philosophy, and so forth, no better than not at all. So 
that, except inasmuch as nature was still busy ; and he 
himself ' went about, as was of old his wont, among the 
Craftsmen's workshops, there learning many things ; ' 
and farther lighted on some small store of curious reading, 
in Hans Wachtel the Cooper's house, where he lodged, 
— his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted. Which 
facts the Professor has not yet learned to look upon with 
any contentment. Indeed, throughout the whole of this 
Bag Scorpio, where we now are, and often in the follow- 
ing Bag, he shews himself unusually animated on the 
matter of Education, and not without some touch of 
what we might presume to be anger. 

* My Teachers,' says he, ' were hide-bound Pedants, 
without knowledge of man's nature or of boys ; or of 
aught save their lexicons and quarterly account-books. 
Innumerable dead Vocables (no dead Language, for 
they themselves knew no Language) they crammed 
into us, and called it fostering the growth of mind. 
How can an inanimate, mechanical Gerund-grinder, 
the like of whom will, in a subsequent century, be 
manufactured, at Niirnberg, out of wood and leather, 
foster the growth of any thing ; much more of Mind, 
which grows, not like a vegetable (by having its roots 
littered with etymological compost), but like a Spirit, 
by mysterious contact of Spirit; Thought kindling 
itself at the fire of living Thought 1 How shall he 
give kiadling, in whose own inward man there is no 
live coajj but all is burnt out to a dead grammatical 
cinder 1 The Hinterschlag Professors knew Syntax 
enough ; and of the human soul thus much : that it 
had a faculty called Memory, and could be acted on 



108 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* through the muscular integument by appliance of birch 

* rods. 

* Alas, so is it every where, so will it ever be ; till 

* the Hodman is discharged, or reduced to Hod bearing ; 

* and an Architect is hired, and on all hands fitly en- 

* couraged : till communities and individuals discover, 

* not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a 

* generation by Knowledge can rank on a level with 

* blowing their bodies to pieces by Gunpowder ; that 

* with Generals and Field-marshals for killing, there 
' should be world-honoured Dignitaries, and were it 

* possible, true God-ordained Priests, for teaching. But 

* as yet, though the Soldier wears openly, and even 

* parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I have 

* travelled, did the Schoolmaster make show of his in- 

* structing-tool : nay, were he to walk abroad with birch 

* girt on thigh, as if he therefrom expected honour, would 

* not, among the idler class, a certain levity be excited ? ' 

In the third year of this Gymnasic period. Father An- 
dreas seems to have died : the young Scholar, otherwise 
so maltreated, saw himself for the first time clad out- 
wardly in sables, and inwardly in quite inexpressible 
melancholy. * The dark bottomless Abyss, that lies 

* under our feet, had yawned open ; the pale kingdoms 

* of Death, with all their innumerable silent nations and 

* generations stood before him ; the inexorable word, 

* Never ! now first showed its meaning. My mother 

* wept, and her sorrow got vent ; but in my heart there 

* lay a whole lake of tears, pent up in silent desolation. 

* Nevertheless, the unworn Spirit is strong ; Life is so 

* healthful that it even finds nourishment in Death : 

* these stern experiences, planted down by Memory in 



PEDAGOGY. 109 

my Imagination, rose there to a whole cypress forest, 
sad but beautiful ; waving, with not unmelodious sighs, 
in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through 
long years of youth : — as in manhood also it does, and 
will do ; for I have now pitched my tent under a Cy- 
press tree ; the Tomb is now my inexpugnable Fort- 
tress, ever close by the gate of which I look upon the 
hostile armaments, and pains and penalties, of tyran- 
nous Life placidly enough, and listen to its loudest 
threatenings with a still smile. 4^ ye loved ones, that 
already sleep in the noiseless Bed of Rest, whom in life 
I could only weep for and never help; and ye, who 
wide-scattered still toil lonely in the monster-bearino- 
Desert, dyeing the flinty ground with your blood, — yet 
a little while, and we shall all meet there, and our 
Mother's bosom will screen us all ; and Oppression's 
harness, and Sorrow's fire-whip, and all the Gehenna 
Bailiffs that patrol and inhabit ever-vexed Time, cannot 
thenceforth harm us any more ! ' 
Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, lies a 
laboured Character of the deceased Andreas Futteral ; 
of his natural ability, his deserts in life (as Prussian 
Sergeant) ; with long historical inquiries into the gene- 
alogy of the Futteral family, here traced back as far as 
Henry the Fowler : the whole of which we pass over, 
not without astonishment. It only concerns us to add 
that now was the time when Mother Gretchen revealed to 
her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred : 
or indeed of any kindred, having come into historical 
existence in the way already known to us. * Thus was 

* I doubly orphaned,' says he ; ' bereft not only of Pos- 

* session, but even of Remembrance. Sorrow and Won- 

U 



110 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* der, here suddenly united, could not but produce abun- 

* dant fruit. Such a disclosure, in such a season, struck 
' its roots through my whole nature : ever till the years 
' of mature manhood, it mingled with my whole thoughts, 

* was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams and night- 

* dreams grew. A certain poetic elevation, yet also a 

* corresponding civic depression, it naturally imparted : 

* I was like no other; in which fixed-idea, leading 

* sometimes to highest, and oftener to frightfulest results, 

* may there not lie the first spring of Tendencies, that in 
' my Life have become remarkable enough ? As in 

* birth, so in action, speculation, and social position, my 

* fellows are perhaps not numerous.' 

In the Bag Sagittarius, as we at length discover, 
Teufelsdrockh has become a University man ; though 
how, when, or of what quality, will nowhere disclose it- 
self with the smallest certainty. Few things, in the way 
of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can now sur- 
prise our readers ; not even the total want of dates, 
almost without a parallel in a Biographical work. So 
enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, and must 
always look to find, these scattered Leaves. In Sagitta- 
rius, however, Teufelsdrockh begins to shew himself 
even more than usually Sibylline : fragments of all sorts ; 
scraps of regular Memoir, College Exercises, Programs, 
Professional Testimoniums, Milkscores, torn Billets, 
sometimes to appearance of an amatory cast ; all blown 
together as if by merest chance, henceforth bewilder the 
sane Historian. To combine any picture of these Uni- 
versity, and the subsequent, years ; much more, to de- 
cipher therein any illustrative primordial elements of the 



PEDAGOGY. ' 111 

Clothes-Philosophy, becomes such a problem as the 
reader may imagine. 

So much we can see ; darkly, as through the foliage of 
some wavering thicket : a youth of no common endow- 
ment, that has passed happily through Childhood, less 
happily yet still vigorously through Boyhood, now at 
length perfect in ' dead vocables,' and set down as he 
hopes, by the living Fountain, there to superadd Ideas 
and Capabilities. From such Fountain he draws, dili- 
gently, thirstily, yet nowise with his whole heart, for the 
water nowise suits his palate ; discouragements, entan- 
glements, aberrations are discoverable or supposable. 
Nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses wanting ; for 

* the good Gretchen, who in spite of advices from notdis- 

* interested relatives has sent him hither, must after a 

* time withdraw her willing but too feeble hand.' Never- 
theless in an atmosphere of Poverty and manifold 
Chagrin, the Humour of that young Soul, what character 
is in him, first decisively reveals itself; and, like strong 
sunshine in weeping skies, gives out variety of colours, 
some of which are prismatic. Thus with the aid of 
Time, and of what Time brings, has the stripling Dio- 
genes Teufelsdrockh waxed into manly stature ; and 
into so questionable an aspect, that we ask with new eager- 
ness How he specially came by it, and regret anew that 
there is no more explicit answer. Certain of the intel- 
ligible and partially significant fragments, which are few 
in number, shall be extracted from that Limbo of a 
Paperbag, and presented with the usual preparation. 

As if, in the Bag Scorpio, Teufelsdrockh had not 
already expectorated his antipedagogic spleen ; as if, 
from the name Sagittarius, he had thought himself called 



112 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

upon to shoot arrows, we here again fall in with such 
nmatter as this : * The University where I was educated 
still stands vivid enough in my remembrance, and I 
know its name well ; which name, however, I, from 
tenderness to existing interests and persons, shall in no 
wise divulge. It is my painful duty to say that, out of 
England and Spain, ours was the worst of all hitherto 
discovered Universities. This is indeed a time when 
right Education is, as nearly as may be, impossible : 
however, in degrees of wrongness there is no limit : 
nay, I can conceive a worse system than that of the 
Nameless itself; as poisoned victual may be worse than 
absolute hunger. 

* It is written. When the blind lead the blind, both 
shall fall into the ditch : vi^herefore, in such circum- 
stances, may it not sometimes be safer, if both leader 
and led simply — sit still ? Had you, anywhere in 
Crim Tartary, walled in a square enclosure ; furnished 
it with a small, ill-chosen Library; and then turned 
loose into it eleven hundred Christian striplings, to 
tumble about as they listed, from three to seven years ; 
certain persons, under the title of Professors, being sta- 
tioned at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a Uni- 
versity, and exact considerable admission fees, — you 
had, not indeed in mechanical structure, yet in spirit 
and result, some imperfect resemblance of our High 
Seminary. I say, imperfect ; for if our mechanical 
structure was quite other, so neither was our result 
altogether the same : unhappily, we were not in Crim 
Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, full of smoke 
and sin ; moreover, in the middle of a Public, which, 
without far costlier apparatus, than that of the Square 



PEDAGOGY. 113 

Enclosure, and Declaration aloud, you could not be sure 
of gulling. 
* Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all Publics are ;" 
and gulled, with the most surprising profit. Towards 
any thing like a Statistics of Imposture, indeed, little as 
yet has been done : with a strange indifference, our 
Economists, nigh buried under tables for minor 
Branches of Industry, have altogether overlooked the 
grand all-overtopping Hypocrisy Branch ; as if our 
whole arts of Puffery, of Quackery, Priestcraft, King- 
craft, and the innumerable other crafts and mysteries of 
that genus, had not ranked in Productive Industry at 
all ! Can any one, for example, so much as say, 
What monies, in Literature and Shoeblacking, are 
realised by actual Instruction and actual jet Polish ; 
what by fictitious-persuasive Proclamation of such; 
specifying, in distinct items, the distributions, circula- 
tions, disbursements, incoming of said monies, with 
the smallest approach to accuracy l But to ask. How 
far, in all the several infinitely complected departments 
of social business, in government, education, in manual, 
commercial, intellectual fabrication of every sort, man's 
Want is supplied by true Ware ; how far by the mere 
Appearance of true Ware : — in other words, To what 
extent, by what methods, with what effects, in various 
times and countries. Deception takes the place and 
wages of Performance : here truly is an Inquiry big 
with results for the future time, but to which hitherto 
only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the pre- 
sent, in our Europe, we estimate the ratio of Ware to 
Appearance of Ware so high even as at One to a Hun- 
dred (which, considering the Wages of a Pope, Rus- 
11* 



114 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* sian Autocrat, or English Game-preserver, is probably 

* not far from the mark), — what almost prodigious saving 

* may there not be anticipated, as the Statistics of Impos- 

* ture advances, and so the manufacturing of Shams 

* (that of Realities rising into clearer and clearer distinc- 
' tion therefrom) gradually declines, and at length be- 

* comes all but wholly unnecessary ! 

' This for the coming golden ages. What I had to 
' remark, for the present brazen one, is, that in several 

* provinces, as in Education, Polity, Religion, where so 

* much is wanted and indispensable, and so little can as 

* yet be furnished, probably Imposture is of sanative, 
' anodyne nature, and man's Gullibility not his worst 

* blessing. Suppose your sinews of war quite broken ; 

* I mean your military chest insolvent, forage all but 
'exhausted; and that the whole army is about to 

* mutiny, disband, and cut your and each other's throat, 

* — then were it not well could you, as if by miracle, 

* pay them in any sort of fairy-money, feed them on co- 
' agulated water, or mere imagination of meat ; whereby, 
' till the real supply came up, they might be kept toge- 

* ther, and quiet 1 Such perhaps was the aim of Nature, 

* who does nothing without aim, in furnishing her fa- 

* vourite, Man, with this his so omnipotent or rather 
' omni-patient Talent of being Gulled. 

* How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism ; 

* nay, almost makes mechanism for itself! These Pro- 

* fessors in the Nameless lived with ease, with safety, by 

* a mere Reputation, constructed in past times, and then, 

* too with no great effort, by quite another class of per- 

* sons. Which Reputation, like a strong brisk-going 
' undershot-wheel, sunk into the general current, bade 



PEDAGOGY. 115 

* fair, with only a little annual repainting on their part, 
' to hold long together, and of its own accord assiduously 
' grind for them. Happy that it was so for the Mil- 
Mers ! They themselves needed not to work; their 
' attempts at working, at what they cabled Educating, 

* now when I look back on it, fill me with a certain mute 
' admiration. 

* Besides all this we boasted ourselves a Rational 
' University ; in the highest degree, hostile to Mysticism ; 
' thus was the young vacant mind furnished with much 
' talk about Progress of the Species, Dark Ages, Pr^eju- 

* dice, and the like ; so that all were quickly enough 
'blown out into a state of windy argumentativeness; 
' whereby the better sort must soon end in sick, impo- 

* tent Scepticism ; the worser sort explode (crepiren) in 

* finished Self-conceit and to all spiritual intents become 

* dead.— But this too is portion of mankind's lot. If our 

* era is the Era of Unbelief, why murmur under it; is 

* there not a better coming, nay come ? As in longdrawn 

* Systole and longdrawn Diastole, must the period of 
' Faith alternate with the period of Denial ; must the 

* vernal growth, the summer luxuriance of all Opinions, 
' Spiritual Representations and Creations, be followed 

* by, and again follow, the autumnal decay, the winter 

* dissolution. For man lives in Time, has his whole 
' earthly being, endeavour, and destiny shaped for him 
' by Time : only in the transitory Time-Symbol is the 

* ever-motionless Eternity we stand on made manifest. 
' And yet, in such winter-seasons of Denial, it is for the 

* nobler-minded perhaps a comparative misery to have 
' been born, and to be awake, and work ; and for the 

* duller a felicity, if like hibernating animals, safe-lodged 



I |() HAUTOll IIKHAIITIIH. 

* in HONK! S:ilaiiiuiicii IJiiiviirsity, or SybnriH ^'ily, or 
' otimr Hii|)(;rHlili<)UH or voliipliionH ('iiHlNi of liidolctico, 
' tlicy can Mlinnl)f;r lliroii/^h, in Hl,ii|)i(] drcniriH, iiikI only 
' uvviikf;n when ilic loiid-ronrin^ liiiilKtorrriM luivc all dono 

* their work, and to our prayorM otid ninrtyrdoiriH tho now 
' Spriii)^ liuH lurn voucJisarcd.' 

Thai, in IIk; cnvironuK;!!!, hero niyHtoriouMly <;nough 
Hhiulow(!d forlh, ToulolsdriK'/kh tnuHt hav<5 (oil ill at ohho, 
cannol. Ik; donhlful. ' 'Tin; hiiii'fry yonnjr,' ho Hays, 

* looktid up to thiMr Hpirilual Nui.soh ; and, for food, wore 
' hidden eat the (mihI, wind. What, vain jargon of coti- 
' lr(»versi:\l MetaphyHic, I'ityinolo^y, and mechanical 

* IVlanipidatif)!! ralH(dy named Scioficn, waH current 

* there, I indeed learned, helirr porhapH than the most. 

* Among ohiVi-n hundred ('hriHlian yontliH, there will not 
' 1)0 wanting Horru? <d(5V(!n (!a<rer lo hiarn. By c-olliHion 
' wiili huch, a certain warmth, a certain poliiih waH com- 
' municat(!d : hy inntinct and hap|)y accidiMit, 1 took lesn 
' to rioting {rmnmmirm), than to thinking and reading. 
' which latter also I wan Won to do. Nay IVorn the 
' cliaoH of that liihrary, I HUCceod(Ml in liHhing np more 
' hook.s perhaj)S than had heen known to the very 

* koop(!rH th(!r(!or. 'J'ho foundation of a Lit((rary Life 
' wiiH herehy laid : I hsirncid, on my own strength, to 
' read Huenlly in almoHt all cultivated languages, on 
' almoHt all HuhjectH, and Hcionc(!H ; fartlMT, aw man iH 
' ev(!r the prime ohjoct to man, ah<!ady it waH my 
' favoiirit<; omploym<;nt to road character in Hpecidation, 
' nnd IVom the Writing to conHtrne the Writer. A cer- 
' tain groun<lplan of llunuin Nature and Life h(;gan to 
' CaHliion ilMcir in me ; wondrouH enough, now when 1 
' look l)iick on it ; lor my whole Universe, phynical and 



I 



PEDAGOGY. 117 

* Spiritual, was as yet a machine ! Mowcvcr, such a 

* corisciouii, recognised jcfroundplan, the truest I liad, 
' ivas beginning to be there, and by additional experi- 

* rnents, might be corrected and indefinitely extended.' 

Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler 
wealth ; thus in the destitution of the wild desert, docs 
our young Fshmael ac(|uirc for himself the highest of all 
possessions, that of Self-help. NeverthelebS a desert 
this was, waste, and howling with savage monsters. 
Teufeisdr()ckh gives us long details of his * fever- 
paroxysms of Doubt;' his Jiniuires concerning Mira- 
cles, and the Evidences of religious Faith ; and how ' iti 
the silent night-watches, still darker in his heart than 
over sky and earth, he has cast himself before the All- 
seeing, and with audible prayers, cried vehemently for 
Light, for deliverance from Death and the (irave. Not 
till after long years, and uns|)eakablc agonies, did the 
believing heart surrender ; sink into spell-bound sleep, 
under the nightmare. Unbelief; and, in this hag- 
ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world for a 
pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But 
through such Purgatory pain,' continues he, * it is ap- 
pointed us to pass ; first must the dead Letter of Reli- 
gion own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if 
the living S[)irit of lieligion, freed from this its charnel- 
house, is to arise on us, newborn of IJeaven, and with 
new healing under its wings,* 

To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, 

f we add a liberal measure of Earthly distresses, want 

)f practical guidance, want of sympathy, want of money, 

want of hope ; and all this in the fervid season of youth, 

80 exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in desires, yet 



118 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

here so poor in means, — do we not see a strong incipient 
spirit oppressed and overloaded from without and from 
within ; the fire of genius struggling up among fuel- 
wood of the greenest, and as yet with more of bitter 
vapour than of clear flame? 

From various fragments of Letters and other docu- 
mentary scraps, it is to be inferred that Teufelsdrockh, 
isolated, shy, retiring as he was, had not altogether 
escaped notice : certain established men are aware of his 
existence; and, if stretching out no helpful hand, have 
at least their eyes on him. He appears, though in 
dreary enough humour, to be addressing himself to the 
Profession of Law ; whereof, indeed, the world has 
since seen him a public graduate. But omitting these 
broken, unsatisfactory thrums of Economical relation, 
let us present rather the following small thread of Moral 
relation ; and therewith, the reader for himself weaving 
it in at the right place, conclude our dim arras-picture 
of these University years. 

' Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with 
' Herr Towgood, or, as it is perhaps better written, Herr 

* Toughgut ; a young person of quality {von Add), from 
' the interior parts of England. He stood connected, by 

* blood and hospitality, with the Counts von Zahdarm, 

* in this quarter of Germany ; to which noble Family 

* I likewise was, by his means, with all friendliness, 
' brought near. Towgood had a fair talent, unspeakably 
' ill-cultivated ; with considerable humour of character : 

* and, bating his total ignorance, for he knew nothing 

* except Boxing and a little Grammar, shewed less of 

* that aristocratic impassivity, and silent fury, than for 

* most part belongs to Travellers of his nation. To him 



PEDAGOGY. 119 

* I owe my first practical knowledge of the English and 

* their ways ; perhaps also something of the partiality 

* with which I have ever since regarded that singular 

* people. Towgood was not without an eye, could he 

* have come at any light. Invited doubtless by the 

* presence of the Zahdarm Family, he had travelled 

* hither, in the almost frantic hope of perfecting his 
'studies; he, whose studies had been as yet those of 

* infancy, hither to a University where so much as the 

* notion of perfection, not to say the effort after it, no 
' longer existed ! Often we would condole over the 

* hard destiny of the Young in this era : how, after all 

* our toil, we were to be turned out into the world, with 

* beards on our chins indeed, but with few other attri- 

* butes of manhood ; no existing thing that we were 

* trained to Act on, nothing that we could so much as 

* Believe. *' How has our head on the outside a 

* polished Hat," would Towgood exclaim, " and in 

* the inside Vacancy, or a froth of Vocables and 

* Attorney Logic ! At a small cost men are educated 

* to make leather into shoes ; but, at a great cost, what 

* am I educated to make ? By Heaven, Brother ! 

* what I have already eaten and worn, as I came thus 

* far, would endow a considerable Hospital of In- 

* curables."— " Man, indeed," I would answer, " has 

* a Digestive Faculty, which must be kept working, 
' were it even partly by stealth. But as for our Mis- 

* education, make not bad worse ; waste not the time 

* yet ours, in trampling on thistles because they have 

* yielded us no figs. Friscli zu^ Bruder ! Here are 

* Books, and we have brains to read them; here is a 



120 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* whole Earth and a whole Heaven, and we have eyes 

* to look on them : Frisch zu!" 

* Often also our talk was gay ; not without brilliancy, 

* and even fire. We looked out on Life, with its strange 

* scaffolding, where all at once harlequins dance, and 

* men are beheaded and quartered : motley, not unterrific 

* was the aspect ; but we looked on it like brave youths. 

* For myself, these were perhaps my most genial hours. 

* Towards this young warmhearted, strongheaded and 

* wrongheaded Herr Towgood, I was even near experi- 
' encing the now obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, 

* foolish Heathen that I was, I felt that, under certain 

* conditions, I could have loved this man, and taken 

* him to my bosom, and been his brother once and always. 

* By degrees, however, I understood the new time, and 

* its wants. If man's Soul is indeed, as in the Finnish 

* Language, and Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of 
' Stomach, what else is the true meaning of Spiritual 

* Union but an Eating together ? Thus we, instead of 

* Friends, are Dinner-guests ; and here as elsewhere 

* have cast away chimeras.' 

So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, this 
little incipient romance. What henceforth becomes of 
the brave Herr Towgood, or Toughgut 1 He has dived 
under, in the Autobiographical Chaos, and swims we see 
not where. Does any reader ' in the interior parts of 
England ' know of such a man 1 



GETTING UNDER WAY. 121 



CHAPTER IV, 



GETTING UNDER WAY. 



* Thus nevertheless,' writes our Autobiographer, appa- 
rently as quitting Collegej ' was there realised Some- 

* what ; nameiyj I, Diogenes Teufelsdrcckh : a visible 

* Temporary Figure [Zeifbild), occupying some cubic 

* feet of Space, and containing within it Forces both 
' physical and spiritual ; hopes, passionSj thoughts; the 

* whole wondrous furniture, in more or less perfection, 
' belonging to that mystery, a Man. Capabilities there 

* were in me to give battle, in some small degree, 

* against the great Empire of Darkness : does not the 

* very Ditcher and Delver, with his spade, extinguish 

* many a thistle and puddle ; and so leave a little Order, 

* where he found the opposite 1 NSf your very Day- 

* moth has capabilities in this kind ; and ever organises 

* something (into its own Body, if no otherwise), which 

* was before Inorganic ; and of mute dead air makes 

* living music, though only of the faintest, by humming. 

' How much more one whose capabilities are spi- 

* ritual ; who has learned, or begun learning, the grand 

* thaumaturgic art of Thought! Thaumaturgic I name 

* it; for hitherto all Miracles have been wrought there- 

* by, and henceforth innumerable will be wrought; 

* whereof we, even in these days, witness some. Of the 

* Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and how it 

12 



132 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

makes and unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear 
mention : but cannot the dullest hear Steam-engines 
clanking around him ? Has he not seen the Scottish 
Brassmith's Idea (and this but a mechanical one) 
travelling on fire-wings round the Cape, and across 
two Oceans ; and stronger than any other Enchanter's 
Familiar, on all hands unweariedly fetching and carry- 
ing : at home, not only weaving Cloth ; but rapidly 
enough overturning the whole old system of Society ; 
and, for Feudalism and Preservation of the Game, 
preparing us, by indirect but sure methods, Industrial- 
ism and the Government of the Wisest. Truly a 
Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince of Dark- 
ness can have; every time such a one announces him- 
self, I doubt not, there runs a shudder through the 
Nether Empire ; and new Emissaries are trained,, with 
new tactics, to, if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink 
and handcuff him. 

' With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of 
the Universe, been called. Unhappy it is, however, 
that though hoifit to the amplest Sovereignty, in this 
way, with no less than sovereign right of Peace and 
War against the Time-Prince {Zeitfurst), or Devil, 
and all his Dominions, your coronation ceremony costs 
such trouble, your sceptre is so difficult to get at, or 
even to get eye on 1 ' 
By which last wiredrawn similitude, does Teufels- 
drockh mean no more than that young men find ob- 
stacles in what we call ' getting under way ? ' ' Not 
' what I Have,' continues he, ' but what I Do is my 
' Kingdom. To each is given a certain inward Talent, 
* a certain outward Environment of Fortune ; to each, 



GETTING UNDER WAY. 123 

by wisest combination of these two, a certain maximum 
of Capability. (But the hardest problem were ever 
this first : To find by study of yourself, and of the 
ground you stand on, what your combined inward and 
outward Capability specially is.' For, alas, our young 
soul is all budding with Capabilities, and vve see not 
yet which is the main and true one. Always too the 
new man is in a new time, under new conditions; his 
course can be the facsimile of no prior one, but is by 
its nature original. And then how seldom will the 
outward Capability fit the inward : though talented 
wonderfully enough, we are poor, unfriended, dys- 
peptical, bashful ; nay what is worse than all, we are 
foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio of Capabilities, 
we go stupidly groping about, to grope which is ours, 
and often clutch the wrong one : in this mad work, 
must several years of our small term be spent, till the 
purblind Youth, by practice, acquire notions of dis- 
tance, and become a seeing Man. Nay, many so 
spend their whole term, and in ever new expectation, 
ever new disappointment, shift from enterprise to enter- 
prise, and from side to side ; till at length, as exaspe- 
rated striplings of threescore and ten, they shift into 
their last enterprise, that of getting buried. 
* Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, would 
be the general fate ; were it not that one thing saves 
us: our Hunger. For on this ground, as the prompt 
nature of Hunger is well known, must a prompt choice 
be made : hence have we, with wise foresight. Inden- 
tures and Apprenticeships for our irrational young; 
whereby, in due season, the vague universality of ^ 
Man shall find himself ready-moulded into a specific 



124 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* Craftsman ; and so thenceforth work, with much or 

* with little waste of Capability as it may be ; yet not 

* with the worst waste, that of time. Nay even in 

* matters spiritual, since the spiritual artist too is born 

* blind, and does not, like certain other creatures, receive 

* sight in nine days, but far later, sometinies never, — is 

* it not well that there should be what we call Profes- 

* sions, or Bread-studies [Brodtzwecke) , preappointed 

* us ? Here, circling like the gin-horse, for whom par- 

* tial or total blindness is no evil, the Bread-artist can 

* travel contentedly round and round, still fancying that 

* it is forward and forward, and realise much: for him- 
' self victual ; for the world an additional horse's power 

* in the grand corn-mill or hemp-mill of Economic 

* Society. For me too had such a leading-string been 

* provided : only that it proved a neck-halter, and had 

* niorh throttled me, till I broke it off. Then, in the 

* words of Ancient Pistol, did the World generally be- 
^ come mine oyster, which I, by strength or cunning, 
' was to open, as I would and could. Almost had J 

* deceased {fast war ich umgekommen)^ so obstinately 

* did it continue shut.' 

We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit of 
much that was to befall our Autobiographer ; the his- 
torical embodyment of which, as it painfully takes shape 
in his Life, lies scattered, in dim disastrous details, 
through this Bag Pisces, and those that follow. A 
young man of high talent, and high though still temper, 
like a young mettled colt, ' breaks off his neck-halter,* 
and bounds forth, from his peculiar manger, into the 
wide world ; which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced 
in. Richest clover-fields tempt his eye ; but to him 



GETTING UNDER WAY. 125 

they are forbidden pasture : either pining in progressive 
starvation, he must stand ; or, in mad exasperation, must 
rush to and fro, leaping against sheer stone-walls, which 
he cannot leap over, which only lacerate and lame him ; 
till, at last, after thousand attempts and endurances, he, 
as if by miracle, clears his way; not indeed into luxuri- 
ant and luxurious clover, yet into a certain bosky wilder- 
ness where existence is still possible, and Freedom 
though waited on by Scarcity is not without sweetness. 
In a word, Teufelsdrockh having thrown up his legal 
Profession, finds himself without landmark of outward 
guidance; whereby his previous want of decided Belief, 
or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. Necessity 
urges him on ; Time will not stop, neither can he, a Son 
of Time; wild passions without solacement, wild facul- 
ties without employment, ever vex and agitate bim. 
He too must enact that stern Monodrama, No Object 
and no Rest ; must front its successive destinies, work 
through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what 
moral he can. 

Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that his * neck- 
halter ' sat nowise easy on him ; that he was in some 
degree forced to break it off. If we look at the young 
man's civic position, in this Nameless Capital, as he 
emerges from its Nameless University, we can discern 
well that it was far from enviable. His first Law 
Examination he has come through triumphantly ; and 
can even boast that the Examen Rigorosum need not 
have frightened him : but though he is hereby * an 
Auscultator of respectability,' what avails it? There 
is next to no employment to be had. Neither, for a 
youth without connexions, is the process of Expectation 
12* 



126 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his disposition 
much cheered from without. ' My fellow Auscultators/ 
he says, ' were Auscultators : they dressed, and digested, 

* and talked articulate words ; other vitality shewed they 

* almost none. Small speculation in those eyes, that 
' they did glare withal ! Sense neither for the high nor 

* for the deep, nor for aught human or divine, save only 

* for the faintest scent of coming Preferment.' In 
which words, indicating a total estrangement on the 
part of Teufelsdrockh, may there not also lurk traces 
of a bitterness as from wounded vanity? Doubtless 
these prosaic Auscultators may have sniffed at him, with 
his strange ways; and tried to hate, and, what was much 
more impossible, to despise him. Friendly communion, 
in any case, there could not be : already has the young 
Teufelsdrockh left the other young geese; and swims 
apart, though as yet uncertain whether he himself is 
cygnet or gosling. 

Perhaps too what little employment he had was 
performed ill, at best unpleasantly. * Great practical 
method and expertness' he may brag of; but is there 
not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, only 
the deeper-seated ? So shy a man can never have been 
popular. We figure to ourselves, how in those days he 
may have played strange freaks with his Independence, 
and so forth : do not his own words betoken as much ? 

* Like a very young person, I imagined it was with 

* Work alone, and not also with Folly and Sin, in my- 

* self and others, that I had been appointed to struggle.' 
Be this as it may, his progress from the passive Auscul- 
tatorship, towards any active Assessorship, is evidently 
of the slowest. By degrees, those same established 



GETTING UNDER WAY. J27 

men, once partially inclined to patronise him, seem to 
withdraw their countenance, and give him up as * a 
man of genius ; ' against which procedure he, in these 
Papers, loudly protests. ' As if,' says he, * the higher 
' did not presuppose the lower ; as if lie who can fly 

* into heaven, could not also walk post if he resolved on 

* it ! But the world is an old woman, and mistakes any 

* gilt farthing for a gold coin ; whereby being often 

* cheated she will thenceforth trust nothing but the 

* common copper.' 

How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a 
terrestrial runner, contrived, in the mean while, to keep 
himself from flying skyward without return, is not too 
clear from these Documents. Good old Gretchen seems 
to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from the Earth ; 
other Horn of Plenty, or even of Parsimony, no where 
flows for him ; so that ' the prompt nature of Hunger 
being well known,' we are not without our anxiety. 
From private Tuition, in never so many languages and 
sciences, the aid derivable is small ; neither, to use his 
own words, * does the young Adventurer hitherto suspect 

* in himself any literary gift; but at best earns bread- 

* and-water wages, by his wide faculty of Translation. 

* Nevertheless,' continues he, * that I subsisted is clear, 

* for you find me even now alive.' Which fact, how- 
ever, except upon the principle of our true-hearted, kind 
old Proverb, that * there is ever Life for the Living,' 
we must profess ourselves unable to explain. 

Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic Docu- 
ments, bearing the mark of Settlement, indicate that he 
was not without money ; but, like an independent Hearth- 
holder, if not House-holder, paid his way. Here also 



128 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

occur, among many others, two little mutilated Notes, 
which perhaps throw light on his condition. The 
first has now no date, or writer's name, but a huge Blot; 
and runs to this effect : * The (Inkblot), tied down by 
' previous promise, cannot, except by best wishes, for- 

* ward the Herr Teufelsdrockh's views on the Assessor- 

* ship in question ; and sees himself under the cruel ne- 
' cessity of forbearing for the present, what were other- 

* wise his duty and joy, to assist in opening the career 

* for a man of genius, on whom far higher triumphs are 

* yet waiting.' The other is on gilt paper; and interests 
us like a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet which 
once lived and beneficently worked. We give it in the 
original : ' Herr Teufelsdrockh wird von der Frau 

* Grafinn, auf Donnerstag, zum ^sthetischen Thee, 

* schonstens eingeladen.' 

Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, whereof 
there is the most urgent need, comes, epigrammatically 
enough, the invitation to a wash of quite fluid Esthetic 
Tea ! How Teufelsdrockh, now at actual handgrips 
with Destiny herself, may have comported himself among 
these Musical and Literary Dilettanti of both sexes, like 
a hungry lion invited to a feast of chickenweed, we can 
only conjecture. Perhaps in expressive silence, and ab- 
stinence : otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast 
at all, it cannot be on the chickenweed, but only on the 
chickens. For the rest, as this Frau Grafinn dates from 
the Zdlidarm House, she can be no other than the 
Countess and mistress of the same ; whose intellectual 
tendencies, and good will to Teufelsdrockh, whether on 
the footing of Herr Towgood, or on his own footing, are 
hereby manifest. That some sort of relation, indeed, 



GETTING UNDER WAY. 129 

continued, for a time, to connect our Autobiographer, 
though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble House, 
we have elsewhere express evidence. Doubtless, if he 
expected patronage, it was in vain ; enough for him if 
he here obtained occasional glimpses of the great world, 
from which we at one time fancied him to have been 
always excluded. ' The Zahdarms/ says he, ' lived in 

* the soft, sumptuous garniture of Aristocracy ; whereto 
' Literature and Art, attracted and attached from without, 

* must serve as the handsomest fringing. It was to the 

* Gnddig^n Frau (her Ladyship) that this latter im- 

* provement was due : assiduously she gathered, dexte- 

* rously she fitted on, what fringing was to be had ; lace 

* or cobweb, as the place yielded.' Was Teufelsdrockh 
also a fringe, of lace or cobweb ; or promising to be 
such ? ' With His ExceUenz (the Count),' continues 
he, ' I have more than once had the honour to converse ; 

* chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the world, 
' which he, though now past middle life, viewed in no 
'unfavourable light; finding indeed, except the Out- 

* rooting of Journalism {die auszurotte7ide Journalistic), 
' little to desiderate therein. On some points, as his 

* ExceUenz was not uncholeric, I found it more pleasant 
' to keep silence. Besides, his occupation being that of 
' Owning Land, there might be faculties enough, which, as 

* superfluous for such use, were little developed in him.' 

That to Teufelsdrockh the aspect of the world was 
nowise so faultless, and many things, besides * the Out- 
rooting of Journalism,' might have seemed improve- 
ments, we can readily conjecture. With nothing but a 
barren Auscultatorship from without, and so many muti- 
nous thoughts and wishes from within, his position was no 



130 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

easy one. ' The Universe/ he says, * was as a mighty 

* Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so little of, yet must rede, 

* or be devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable grandeur, 

* yet also in the blackness of darkness, was Life, to my 

* too-unfurnished Thought, unfolding itself. A strange 

* contradiction lay in me ; and I as yet knew not the 
' solution of it; knew not that spiritual music can spring 

* only from discords set in unison); that but for Evil there 

* were no Good, as victory is only possible by Battle.' 

* I have heard affirmed (surely in jest),' observes he 
elsewhere, ' by not unphilanthropic persons, that it were 

* a real increase of human happiness, could all young 

* men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, 
' or rendered otherwise invisible ; and there left to follow 

* their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, 

* sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five. With 
' which suggestion, at least as considered in the light of 

* a practical scheme, I need scarcely say that 1 nowise 

* coincide. Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as 
' young ladies {Mddchen) are, to mankind, precisely 

* the most delightful in those years ; so young gentlemen 

* (Bubchen) do then attain their maximum of detesta- 

* bility. Such gawks (Gecken) are they, and foolish 

* peacocks, and yet with such a vulturous hunger for 

* self-indulgence ; so obstinate, obstreperous, vainglo- 

* rious ; in all senses, so froward and so forward. No 

* mortal's endeavour or attainment will in the smallest 

* content the as yet unendeavouring, unattaining young 
' gentleman ; but he could make it all infinitely better, 

* were it worthy of him. Life every where is the most 

* manageable matter, simple as a question in the Rule of 

* Three : multiply your second and third term together, 



GETTING UNDER WAY. 131 

* divide the product by the first, and your quotient will 

* be the answer, — which you are but an ass if you can- 
' not come at. The booby has not yet found out, by 

* any trial, that) do what one will, there is ever a cursed 

* fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no net integer 

* quotient so much as to be thought of.' 

In which passage, does there not lie an implied con- 
fession that Teufelsdrockh himself, besides his outward 
obstructions, had an inward, still greater, to contend 
with ; namely, a certain temporary, youthful, yet still 
afflictive derangement of head ? Alas ! on the former 
side alone, his case was hard enough. ' It continues 

* ever true,' says he, * that Saturn, or Chronos, or what 

* we call Time, devours all his Children : only by in- 

* cessant Running, by incessant Working, may you (for 
' some threescore and ten years) escape him ; and you 

* too he devours at last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy 
' Alliance of Sovereigns, bid Time stand still; even in 
'thought, shake themselves free of Time ? Our whole 

* terrestrial being is based on Time, and built of Time ; 

* it is wholly a Movement, a Time-impulse ; Time is the 
' author of it, the material of it. Hence also our Whole 

* Duty, which is to Move, to Work, — in the right direc- 
' tion. Are not our Bodies and our Souls in continual 

* movement, whether we will or not ; in a continual 

* Waste, requiring a continual Repair ? Utmost satis- 
' faction of our whole outward and inward Wants were 

* but satisfaction for a space of Time ; thus whatso we 

* have done, is done, and for us annihilated, and ever 

* must we go and do anew. O Time-Spirit, how hast 

* thou environed and imprisoned us, and sunk us so deep 

* in thy troublous dim Time-Element ; that, only in 



132 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* lucid moments, can so much as glimpses of our upper 

* Azure Home be revealed to us ! Me, however, as a 

* Son of Time, unhappier than some others, was Time 

* threatening to eat quite prematurely ; for strive as I 

* might, there was no good Running, so obstructed was 

* the path, so gyved were the feet.' That is to say, we 
presume, speaking in the dialect of this lower world, 
that Teufelsdrockh's whole duty and necessity was, like 
other men's, ' to work, — in the right direction,' and that 
no work was to be had ; whereby he became wretched 
enough. As was natural : with haggard Scarcity threat- 
ening him in the distance ; and so vehement a soul lan- 
guishing in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like 
Sir Hudibras's sword by rust, 

To eat into itself, for lack 

Of something else to hew and hack ! 

But on the whole, that same ' excellent Passivity,' as 
it has all along done, is here again vigorously flourishing ; 
in which circumstance, may we not trace the beginnings 
of much that now characterises our Professor ; and per- 
haps, in faint rudiments, the origin of the Clothes-Philo- 
sophy itself? Already the attitude he has assumed 
towards the World is too defensive ; not, as would have 
been desirable, a bold attitude of attack. ' So far 

* hitherto,' he says, ' as I had mingled with mankind, I 
' was notable, if for any thing, for a certain stillness of 

* manner, which, as my friends often rebukingly declared, 

* did but ill express the keen ardour of my feelings. I, 

* in truth, regarded men with an excess both of love and 

* of fear. The mystery of a Person, indeed, is ever 

* divine, to him that has a sense for the Godlike. Often, 

* notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by half-strangers 



GETTING UNDER WAY. ltJ3 

* hated, for my so-called Hardness (Hdrte), my Indif- 

* ferentism towards men ; and the seemingly ironic tone 

* I had adopted, as my favourite dialect in conversation. 

* Alas, the panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram 

* case, wherein I had striven to envelope myself; that 

* so my own poor Person might live safe there ; and in 

* all friendliness, being no longer exasperated by wounds. 

* Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of 
' the Devil ; for which reason I have, long since, as good 

* as renounced it. But how many individuals did I, in 

* those days, provoke into some degree of hostility there- 

* by ! An ironic man, with his sly stillness, and ambus- 

* cading ways, more especially an ironic young man, from 

* whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to 

* society. Have we not seen persons of weight and name, 

* coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to tread such 
' a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and worm, start 

* ceiling-high {balkenhoch), and thence fall shattered 
' and supine, to be borne home on shutters, not without 

* indignation, when he proved electric and a torpedo!' 

Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of temper 
make way for himself in Life ; where the first problem, as 
Teufelsdrockh too admits, is * to unite yourself with some 
one, and with somewhat {sicli anzuschliessen) 1 ' _Di- 
vision, not union, is written on most part of his procedure. 
Let us add too that, in no great length of time, the only 
important connexion he had ever succeeded in forming, 
his connexion with the Zahdarm Family, seems to have 
been paralysed, for all practical uses, by the death of the 
' not uncholeric' old Count. This fact stands recorded, 
quite incidentally, in a certain Discourse on Epitaphs, 
huddled into the present Bag, among so much else ; of 
13 



134 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

which Essay the learning and curious penetration are more 
to be approved of than the spirit. His grand principle 
is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sort soever, should 
be Historical rather than Lyrical. ' By request of that 

* worthy Nobleman's survivors,' says he, ' I undertook 

* to compose his Epitaph ; and not unmindful of my 

* own rules, produced the following; which, however, 

* for an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect never yet 

* fully visible to myself, still remains unengraven ; ' — 
wherein, we may predict, there is more than the Latinity 
that will surprise an English reader : 

HIC JACET 

PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS, 

Zaehdarmi Comes, 

ex imperii concilio, 

velleris aukei, periscelidis, necnon vulturis nigri 

EQ,UES. 
QUI DtJM SUB LUNA AGEBAT, 

QUINGIUIES MILLE PERDRICES 

PLUMBO CONFECIT : 

VARII CIBI 

CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA, 

PER SE, PERQ,UE SeRVOS Q,UADRUPEDES BIPEDESVE, 

HAUD SINE TUMULTU DEVOLVENS, 

IN STERCUS 

PALAM CONVERTIT. 

NUNC A LABORE REQ,UIESCENTEM 
OPERA SEQUUNTUR. 

SI MONUMENTUM Q,UJERIS 
FIMETUM ADSPICJE. 

PRIMUM IN oRBE Di:JEciT [suh dato] J poSTREMUM \sub dato]. 



ROMANCE. 135 



CHAPTER V. 



ROMANCE. 



* For long years,' writes Teufelsdrockh, * had the poor 

* Hebrew, in this Egypt of an Auscultatorship, painfully 

* toiled, baking bricks without stubble, before ever the 

* question once struck him with entire force: For what? 
* — Beym Himmel! For Food and Warmth! And 

* are Food and Warmth nowhere else, in the whole 
' wide Universe, discoverable? — Come of it what might, 

* I resolved to try.' 

Thus then are we to see him in a new independent 
capacity, though perhaps far from an improved one. 
Teufelsdrockh is now a man without Profession. Quit- 
ting the common Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, 
where indeed his leeward, laggard condition was painful 
enough, he desperately steers off, on a course of his own, 
by sextant and compass of his own. Unhappy Teuf- 
elsdrockh ! Though neither Fleet, nor Traffic, nor Com- 
modores pleased thee, still was it not a Fleet, sailing in 
prescribed track, for fixed objects; above all, in combi- 
nation, wherein, by mutual guidance, by all manner of 
loans and borrowings, each could manifoldly aid the 
other ? How wilt thou sail in unknown seas ; and for 
thyself find that shorter. Northwest Passage to thy fair 
Spice-country of a Nowhere ? — A solitary rover, on such 
a voyage, with such nautical tactics, will meet with 



136 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

adventures. Nay, as we forthwith discover, a certain 
Calypso-Island detains him at the very outset ; and as 
it were falsifies and oversets his whole reckoning. 

* If in youth,' writes he once, 'the Universe is ma- 
jestically unveiling, and everywhere Heaven revealing 
itself on Earth, nowhere to the Young Man does this 
Heaven on Earth so immediately reveal itself as in the 
Young Maiden. Strangely enough, in this strange 
life of ours, it has been so appointed. On the whole, 
as I have often said, a Person {Personlichkeit) is ever 
holy to us ; a certain orthodox Anthropomorphism 
connects my Me with all Tliees in bonds of Love : but 
it is in this approximation of the Like and Unlike, that 
such heavenly attraction, as between Negative and 
Positive, first burns out into a flame. Is the pitifuUest 
mortal Person, think you, indifferent to us ? Is it not 
rather our heartfelt wish to be made one with him ; to 
unite him to us, by gratitude, by admiration, even by 
fear ; or failing all these, unite ourselves to him ? But 
how much more, in this case of the Like-Unlike ! 
Here is conceded us the higher mystic possibility of 
such a union, the highest in our Earth ; thus, in the 
conducting medium of Fantasy, flames forth that Jire- 
development of the universal Spiritual Electricity, 
which, as unfolded between man and woman, we first 
emphatically denominate Love. 

* In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjecture, 
there already blooms a certain prospective Paradise, 
cheered by some fairest Eve ; nor in the stately vistas, 
and flowerage and foliage of that Garden is a Tree of 
Knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst thereof, 
wanting. Perhaps too the whole is but the lovelier if 



ROMANCE. 137 

' Cherubim and a Flaming Sword divide it from all foot- 

* steps of men ; and grant him, the imaginative strip- 
' ling, only the view, not the entrance. Happy season 

* of virtuous youth, when shame is still an impassable 

* celestial barrier ; and the sacred air-cities of Hope have 

* not shrunk into the mean clay-hamlets of Reality ; and 

* man, by his nature, is yet infinite and free ! 

* As for our young Forlorn,' continues Teufelsdrockh, 
evidently meaning himself, ' in his secluded way of life, 

* and with his glowing Fantasy, the more fiery that it 
' burnt under cover, as in a reverberating furnace, his 

* feeling towards the dueens of this Earth was, and 

* indeed is, altogether unspeakable. A visible Divinity 

* dwelt in them ; to our young Friend all women were 
' holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw them flitting 

* past, in their many-coloured angel plumage; or hover- 

* ing mute and inaccessible on the outskirts o'^ JEsthetic 
' Tea : all of air they were, all Soul and Form ; so lovely, 
' like mysterious priestesses, in whose hand was the in- 

* visible Jacob's-ladder, whereby man might mount into 

* very Heaven. That he, our poor Friend, should ever 

* win for himself one of these Grace fuls (Holden) — 

* Ach Gott ! how could he hope it ; should he hot have 

* died under it? There was a certain delirious vertigo 

* in the thought. 

' Thus was the young man, if all sceptical of Demons 

* and Angels such as the vulgar had once believed in, 
' nevertheless not unvisited by hosts of true Sky-born, 

* who visibly and audibly hovered round him whereso he 

* went ; and they had that religious worship in his 

* thought, though as yet it was by their mere earthly 

* and trivial name that he named them. But now, if 

13* 



138 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

' on a soul so circumstanced, some actual Air-maideu, 
' incorporated into tangibility and reality, should cast 

* any electric glance of kind eyes, saying thereby, *' Thou 
'too mayest love and be loved;" and so kindle him, — 

* good Heaven, what a volcanic, earthquake-bringing, 

* all-consuming fire were probably kindled ! ' 

Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst 
forth, with explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the 
inner man of Herr Diogenes ; as indeed how could it 
fail 1 A nature, which, in his own figurative style, we 
might say, had now not a little carbonised tinder, of 
Irritability ; with so much nitre of latent Passion, and 
sulphurous Humour enough ; the whole lying in such 
hot neighbourhood, close by * a reverberating furnace of 
Fantasy : ' have we not here the components of driest 
Gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest spark, to 
blaze up? Neither, in this our Life-element, are sparks 
anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some Angel, whereof 
so many hovered round, must one day, leaving 'the 
outskirts of JEsthetic Tea,^ flit nigher ; and, by electric 
Promethean glance, kindle no despicable firework. 
Happy, if it indeed proved a Firework, and flamed off 
rocket-wise, in successive beautiful bursts of splendour, 
each growing naturally from the other, through the 
several stages of a happy Youthful Love ; till the whole 
were safely burnt out ; and the young soul relieved, with 
little damage ! Happy, if it did not rather prove a Con- 
flagration and mad Explosion ; painfully lacerating the 
heart itself; nay perhaps bursting the heart in pieces 
(which were Death) ; or at best, bursting the thin walls 
of your * reverberating furnace,' so that it rage thence- 
forth all unchecked amonff the contiguous combustibles 



ROMANCE. 139 

(which were Madness) : till of the so fair and manifold 
internal world of our Diogenes, there remained Nothing, 
or only the * crater of an extinct volcano ! ' 

From multifarious Documents in this Bag Capri' 
cornus, and in the adjacent ones on both sides thereof, 
it becomes manifest that our Philosopher, as stoical and 
cynical as he now looks, was heartily and even franticly 
in Love : here therefore may our old doubts whether his 
heart were of stone or of flesh, give way. He loved 
once ; not wisely but too well. And once only : for as 
your Congreve needs a new case or wrappage for every 
new rocket, so each human heart can properly exhibit 
but one Love, if even one ; the ' First Love which is 
infinite' can be followed by no second like unto it. In 
more recent years, accordingly, the Editor of these 
Sheets was led to regard Teufelsdrockh as a man not 
only who would never wed, but who would never even 
flirt ; whom the grand-climacteric itself, and St. Martin's 
Summer of incipient Dotage, would crown with no new 
myrtle garland. To the Professor, women are hence- 
forth Pieces of Art ; of Celestial Art, indeed ; which 
celestial pieces he glories to survey in galleries, but has 
lost thought of purchasing. 

Psyscological readers are not without curiosity to see 
how Teufelsdrockh, in this for him unexampled predica- 
ment, demeans himself; with what specialities of suc- 
cessive configuration, splendour and colour, his Firework 
blazes off". Small, as usual, is the satisfaction that such 
can meet witK here. From amid these confused masses 
of Eulogy and Elegy, with their mad Petrarchan and 
Werterean ware lying madly scattered among all sorts 
of quite extraneous matter, not so much as the fair one's 



140 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

name can be deciphered. For, without doubt, the title 
Bluminc, whereby she is here designated, and which 
means simply Goddess of Flowers, must be fictitious. 
Was her real name Flora, then ? But what was her 
surname, or had she none ? Of what station in Life 
was she ; of what parentage, fortune, aspect ? Specially, 
by what Pre-established Harmony of occurrences did 
the Lover and the Loved meet one another in so wide a 
world ; how did they behave in such meeting 1 To all 
which questions, not unessential in a Biographic work, 
mere Conjecture must for most part return answer. 

* It was appointed,' says, our Philosopher, * that the high 

* celestial orbit of Blumine should intersect the low 

* sublunary one of our Forlorn ; that he, looking in her 
' empyrean eyes, should fancy the upper Sphere of Light 
' was come down into this nether sphere of Shadows ; 

* and finding himself mistaken, make noise enough.' 

We seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, 
beautiful, and some one's Cousin ; highborn, and of 
high spirit; but unhappily dependent and insolvent; 
living, perhaps, on the not too gracious bounty of monied 
relatives. But how came * the Wanderer ' into her 
circle ? Was it by the humid vehicle of JElsthetic Tea, 
or by the arrid one of mere Business ? Was it on the 
hand of Herr Towgood : or of the Gnadige Frau, who, 
as an ornamental Artist, might sometimes like to pro- 
mote flirtation, especially for young cynical Nonde- 
scripts 1 To all appearance it was chiefly by Accident, 
and the grace of Nature. 

' Thou fair Waldschloss, writes our Autobiographer, 

* what stranger ever saw thee, were it even an absolved 

* Auscultator, officially bearing in his pocket the last 



ROMANCE. 141 

* Relatio ex Actis he would ever write ; but must have 

* paused to Wonder ! Noble Mansion ! There stoodest 
' thou, in deep Mountain Amphitheatre, on umbrageous 

* lawns, in thy serene solitude ; stately, massive, all of 
' granite ; glittering in the western sunbeams, like a 
' palace of El Dorado, overlaid vvith precious metal. 

* Beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy 

* guardian Hills : of the greenest was their sward, em- 

* bossed with its dark-brown frets of crag, or spotted by 
' some spreading solitary Tree and its shadow. To the 

* unconscious Wayfarer thou wert also as an Amnion's 
' Temple, in the Libyan Waste ; where, for joy and woe, 

* the tablet of his Destiny lay written. Well might he 

* pause and gaze ; in that glance of his were prophecy 

* and nameless forebodings.' 

But now let us conjecture that the so presentient 
Auscultator has handed in his Relatio ex Actis ; been 
invited to a glass of Rhine-wine ; and so, instead of 
returning dispirited and athirst to his dusty Town-home, 
is ushered into the Gardenhouse, where sit the choicest 
party of dames and cavaliers ; if not engaged in JEsthetic 
Tea, yet in trustful evening conversation, and perhaps 
Musical Coffee, for we hear of ' harps and pure voices 
making the stillness live.' Scarcely, it would seem, is 
the Gardenhouse inferior in respectability to the noble 
Mansion itself ' Embowered amid rich foliage, rose- 

* clusters, and the hues and odours of thousand flowers, 

* here sat that brave company ; in front, from the wide- 

* opened doors, fair outlook over blossom and bush, over 

* grove and velvet green, stretching, undulating onwards 

* to the remote Mountain peaks : so bright, so mild, and 

* everywhere the melody of birds and happy creatures : 



142 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

it was all as if man had stolen a shelter from the Sun 
in the bosom-vesture of Summer herself. How came 
it that the Wanderer advanced thither with such fore- 
casting heart {ahnungsvoU), by the side of his gay 
host? Did he feel that to these soft influences his 
hard bosom ought to be shut ; that here, once more, 
Fate had it in view to try him ; to mock him, and see 
whether there were Humour in him 1 

* Next moment he finds himself presented to the 
party ; and specially by name to — Blumine ! Peculiar 
among all dames and damosels, glanced Blumine, there 
in her modesty, like a star among earthly lights. No- 
blest maiden ! whom he bent to, in body and in soul ; 
yet scarcely dared look at, for the presence filled him 
with painful yet sweetest embarrassment. 

' Blumine's was a name well known to him ; far and 
wide, was the fair one heard of, for her gifts, her graces, 
her caprices : from all which vague colourings of Ru- 
mour, from the censures no less than from the praises, 
had our Friend painted for himself a certain imperious 
Queen of Hearts, and blooming warm Earth-angel, 
much more enchanting than your mere white Heaven- 
angels of women, in whose placid veins circulates too 
little naphtha-fire. Herself also he had seen in public 
places ; that light yet so stately form ; those dark 
tresses, shading a face where smiles and sunligrht 
played over earnest deeps : but all this he had seen 
only as a magic vision, for him inaccessible, almost 
without reality. Her sphere was too far from his ; 
how should she ever think of him ; O Heaven ! how 
should they so much as once meet together ? And 
now that Rose-goddess sits in the same circle with 



ROMANCE. 143 

him ; the light of her eyes has smiled on him, if he 
speak she will hear it ! Nay, who knows, since the 
heavenly Sun looks into lowest valleys, but Blumine 
herself might have aforetime noted the so unnotable ; 
perhaps, from his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, 
gathered wonder, gathered favour for him 1 Was the 
attraction, the agitation mutual, then ; pole and pole 
trembling towards contact, when once brought into 
neighbourhood? Say rather, heart swelling in pre- 
sence of the Uueen of Hearts ; like the Sea swelling 
when once near its Moon ! With the Wanderer it 
was even so: as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly 
as at the touch of a Seraph's wand, his whole soul is 
roused from its deepest recesses ; and all that was 
painful, and that was blissful there, dim images, vague 
feelings of a whole Past and a whole Future, are heav- 
ing in unquiet eddies within him. 

' Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still 
Friend shrunk forcibly together ; and shrouded up his 
tremours and flutterings, of what sort soever, in a safe 
cover of Silence, and perhaps of seeming Stolidity. 
How was it, then, that here, when trembling to the 
core of his heart, he did not sink into swoons, but rose 
into strength, into fearlessness and clearness 1 It was 
his guiding Genius (Damon) that inspired him ; he 
must go forth and meet his Destiny. Shew thyself 
now, whispered it, or be forever hid. Thus sometimes 
it is even when your anxiety becomes transcendental, 
that the soul first feels herself able to transcend it ; 
that she rises above it, in fiery victory ; and, borne on 
new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly, even 
"* because so rapidly, so irresistibly. Always must the 



144 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

' Wanderer remember, with a certain satisfaction and 

* surprise, how in this case he sat not silent, but struck 

* adroitly into the stream of conversation ; which thence- 

* forth, to speak with an apparent not a real vanity, he 

* may say that he continued to lead. Surely, in those 
' hours, a certain inspiration was imparted him, such 
' inspiration as is still possible in our late era. The 

* self-secluded unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in free, 
' glowing words ; his soul is as one sea of light, the 

* peculiar home of Truth and Intellect ; wherein also 

* Fantasy bodies forth form after form, radiant with all 

* prismatic hues.' 

It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there 
talked one * Philistine ; ' who even now, to the general 
weariness, was dominantly pouring forth Philistinism 
{Philistriositdten) ; little witting what hero was here 
entering to demolish him ! We omit the series of 
Socratic, or rather Biogenic utterances, not unhappy in 
their way, whereby the monster, * persuaded into silence,' 
seems soon after to have withdrawn for the night. ' Of 

* which dialectic marauder,' writes our hero, * the dis- 

* comfiture was visibly felt as a benefit by most : but 

* what were all applauses to the glad smile, threatening 

* every moment to become a laugh, wherewith Blumine 

* herself repaid the victor? He ventured to address her, 
' she answered with attention : nay, what if there were 

* a slight tremour in that silver voice ; what if the red 

* glow of evening were hiding a transient blush ! 

* The conversation took a higher tone, one fine thought 

* called forth another : it was one of those rare seasons, 

* when the soul expands with full freedom, and man 

* feels himself brought near to man. Gaily in light, 



ROMANCE, 145 

* graceful abandonment, the friendly taik played round 

* that circle : for the burden was rolled from every heart ; 

* the barriers of Ceremony, which are indeed the laws 
'of polite living, had melted as into vapour; and the 

* poor claims of Me and Thee^ no longer parted by 

* rigid fences, now flowed softly itito one another ; and 

* Life lay all harmonious, many-tinted, like some fair 

* royal champaign, the sovereign and owner of which 

* were Love only. Such music springs from kind hearts, 

* in a kind environment of place and time. And yet as 

* the light grew more aerial on the mountain tops, and 

* the shadows fell longer over the valley, some faint 
' tone of sadness may have breathed through the heart ; 

* and, in whispers more or less audible, reminded every 

* one that as this bright day was drawing towards its 
' close, so likewise must the Day of man's Existence 

* decline into dust and darkness ; and with all its sick 

* toilings, and joyful and mournful noises, sink in the 

* stiir Eternity. 

'To our Friend the hours seemed moments; holy 

* was he and happy : the words from those sweetest lips 

* came over him like dew on thirsty grass; all better 
' feelings in his soul seemed to whisper : It is good for 

* us to be here. At parting, the Blumine's hand was 

* in his : in the balmy twilight, with the kind stars above 

* them, he spoke something of meeting again, which was 

* not contradicted ; he pressed gently those small soft 

* fingers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily, not 

* angrily withdrawn.' 

Poor Teufelsdrockh ! it is clear to demonstration thou 
art smit : the Queen of Hearts would see a * man of 
genius ' also sigh for her ; and there, by art magic, in 
14 



146 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

that preternatural hour, has she bound and spell-bound 
thee. * Love is not altogether a Delirium,' says he else- 
where ; ' yet has it many points in common therewith. 

* I call it rather a discerning of the Infinite in the 

* Finite, of the Idea made Real : which discerning 

* again may be either true or false, either seraphic or 
' demoniac. Inspiration or Insanity. But in the former 

* case, too, as in common madness, it is Fantasy that 

* superadds itself to Sight; on the so petty domain of 

* the Actual, plants its Archimedes'-lever, whereby to 

* move at will the infinite Spiritual. Fantasy I might 

* call the true Heaven-gate and Hell-gate of man : his 

* sensuous life is but the small temporary stage [Zeit- 

* huhne), whereon thick-streaming influences from both 

* these far yet near regions meet visibly, and act tragedy 

* and melodrama. Sense can support herself handsomely, 
' in most countries, for some eigteenpence a-day ; but 

* for Fantasy planets and solar-systems will not suffice. 

* Witness your Pyrrhus conquering the world, yet drink- 

* ing no better red wine than he had before.' Alas, 
witness also your Diogenes, flame-clad, scaling the 
upper Heaven, and verging towards Insanity, for prize 
of a * high-souled Brunette,' as if the Earth held but one, 
and not several of these ! 

He says that, in Town, they met again : * day after 

* day, like his heart's sun, the blooming Blumine shone 
' on him. Ah ! a little while ago, and he was yet all in 

* darkness : him what Graceful (Holde) would ever love? 

* Disbelieving all things, the poor youth had never 

* learned to believe in himself. Withdrawn, in proud 

* timidity, within his own fastnesses ; solitary from men, 
^jet baited by night-spectres enough, he saw himself, 



ROMANCE. 147 

' with a sad indignation, constrained to renounce the 

* fairest hopes of existence. And now, O now ! *' She 

* looks on thee," cried he : " she the fairest, noblest ; 

* do not her dark eyes tell thee, thou art not despised ? 

* The Heaven's-Messenger ! All Heaven's blessings be 

* hers ! " Thus did soft melodies flow through his heart ; 

* tones of an infinite gratitude ; sweetest intimations that 

* he also was a man, that for him also unutterable joys 

* had been provided. 

' In free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent glances, 

* laughter, tears, and often with the inarticulate mystic 

* speech of Music : such was the element they now lived 
' in • in such a many-tinted, radiant Aurora, and by this 

* fairest of Orient Light-bringers must our Friend be 
' blandished, and the new Apocalypse of Nature unrolled 

* to him. Fairest Biumine ! And, even as a Star, all 

* Fire and humid Softness, a very Light-ray incarnate ! 

* Was there so much as a fault, a " caprice," he could 

* have dispensed with ? Was she not to him in very 
' deed a Morning-Star ; did not her presence bring with 

* it airs from Heaven ? As from Eolean Harps in the 
' breath of dawn, as from the Memnon's Statue struck 

* by the rosy finger of Aurora, unearthly music was 

* around him, and lapped him into untried balmy Rest. 

* Pale Doubt fled away to the djstance ; Life bloomed 

* up with happiness and hope. The Past, then, was all 

* a haggard dream ; he had been in the Garden of Eden, 

* then, and could not discern it ! But lo now ! the 

* black walls of his prison melt away ; the captive is 

* alive, is free. Tf he loved his Disenchantress ? Ach 

* Gait ! His whole heart and soul and life were hers, 



148 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

' but never had he named it Love : existence was all a 

* Feeling, not yet shaped into a Thought.' 

Nevertheless, into a Thought, nay into an Action, it 
must be shaped ; for neither Disenchanter nor Disen- 
chantress, mere ' Children of Time,' can abide by Feel- 
ing alone. The Professor knows not, to this day, ' how 

* in her soft, fervid bosom, the Lovely found determina- 

* tion, even on best of Necessity, to cut asunder these 

* so blissful bonds.' He even appears surprised at the 

* Duenna Cousin,' whoever she may have been, * in 

* whose meagre, hunger-bitten philosophy, the religion 

* of young hearts was, from the first, faintly approved 

* of.' We, even at such distance, can explain it without 
necromancy. Let the Philosopher answer this one ques- 
tion : What figure, at that period, was a Mrs. Teufels- 
drockh likely to make in polished society ? Could she 
have driven so much as a brass-bound Grg, or even a 
simple iron-spring one? Thou foolish 'absolved Aus- 
cultator,' before whom lies no prospect of capital, will 
any yet known 'religion of young hearts' keep the 
human Kitchen warm 1 Pshaw ! thy divine Blumine, 
when she * resigned herself to wed some richer,' shews 
more philosophy, though but ' a woman of genius,' than 
thou, a pretended man. 

Our readers have witnessed the origin of this Love- 
mania, and with what royal splendour it waxes, and 
rises. Let no one ask us to unfold the glories of its 
dominant state ; much less the horrors of its almost 
instantaneous dissolution. How from such inorganic 
masses, henceforth madder than ever, as lie in these 
Baors, can even fragments of a living delineation be 



ROMANCE. 149 

organised 1 Besides, of what profit were it ? We view, 
with a lively pleasure, the gay silk Montgolfier start 
from the ground, and shoot upwards, cleaving the liquid 
deeps, till it dwindle to a luminous star : but what is 
there to look longer on, when once, by natural elasticity, 
or accident of fire, it has exploded ? A hapless air- 
navigator, plunging, amid torn parachutes, sand-bags, 
and confused wreck, fast enough, into the jaws of the 
Devil ! Suffice it to know that Teufelsdrockh rose into 
the highest regions of the Empyrean, by a natural para- 
bolic track, and relumed thence in a quick perpendicular 
one. For the rest, let any feeling reader, who has been 
unhappy enough to do the like, paint it out for himself; 
considering only that if he, for his perhaps comparatively 
insignificant mistress, underwent such agonies and 
frenzies, what must Teufelsdrockh's have been, with a 
fire-heart, and for a nonpareil Blumine I We glance 
merely at the final scene : 

* One morning, be found his Morning-star all dimmed 
' and dusky-red ; the fair creature was silent, absent, 

* she seemed to have been weeping. Alas, no longer a 

* Morning-star, but a troublous skyey Portent, an- 
' nouncincr that the Doomsday had dawned! She said, 
' in a tremulous voice, they were to meet no more.' 
The thunderstruck Air-sailor is Bot wanting to himself 
in this dread hour r but what avails it? We omit the 
passionate expostulations, entreaties, indignations, since 
all was vain, and not even an expfanation was conceded 
him ; and hasten to the catastrophe. ' Farewell, then, 

* Madam ! said he, not without sternness, for his stung 
' pride helped him. She put ber hand in his, she looked 

14* 



150 SARTOR RESARTIIS. 

* in his face, tears started to her eyes r in wild audacity 
' he clasped her to his bosom; their lips were joined, 

* their two souls, like two dew-drops,^ rushed into one, 
' — for the first time, and for the last !^ Thus was 
Teufelsdrockh made immortal by a kiss. And then? 
Why, then — ' thick curtains of Night rushed oyer his 

* soul, as rose the immeasurable Crash of Doom ; and 

* through the ruins as of a shivered Universe,^ was he 

* falling, falling, towards the Abyss.' 



SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 151 



CHAPTER VI. 

SORROWS or TEUFELSDROCKH. 

We have long felt that, with a man like our Professor, 
matters must often be expected to take a course of their 
own ; that, in so multiplex, intricate a nature, there 
might be channels, both for admitting and emitting^ 
such as the Psychologist had seldom noted ; in short, 
that on no grand occasion and convulsion, neither in the 
joy-storm nor in the woe-storm, could you predict his 
demeanour. 

To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is 
now clear that the so passionate Teufelsdrockh, precipi- 
tated through * a shivered Universe' in this extraordinary 
way, has only one of three things which he can next 
do : Establish himself in Bedlam ; begin writing Satanic 
Poetry ; or blow out his brains. In the progress towards 
any of which consummations, do not such readers anti- 
cipate extravagance enough : breast-beating, brow-beat- 
ing (against walls), lion-bellovvings of blasphemy and 
the like, stampings, smitings, breakages of furniture, if 
not arson itself? 

Nowise so does Teufelsdrockh deport him. He quietly 
lifts his Pilgerstab (Pilgrim-staff), * old business being 
soon wound up ; ' and begins a perambulation and cir- 
cumambulation of the terraqueous Globe ! Curious it is, 
indeed, how with such vivacity of conception, such in- 



152 SARTOR RESARTtrS. 

tensity of feeling ; above all, with these unconscionable 
habits of Exaggeration in speech, he combines that 
wonderful stillness of his, that stoicism in external 
procedure. Thus if his sudden bereavement, in this 
matter of the Flower-goddess, is talked of as a real 
Doomsday and Dissolution of Nature, in which light 
doubtless it partly appeared to himself, his own nature 
is nowise dissolved thereby ; but rather is compressed 
closer. For once, as we might say» a Blumine by magic 
appliances has unlocked that shut heart of his, and its 
hidden things rush out tumultuous, boundless, like genii 
enfranchised from their glass phial : but no sooner are 
your magic appliances withdrawn, than the strange 
casket of a heart springs-to again ; and perhaps there is 
now no key extant that will open it ; for a Teufelsdrockh, 
as we remarked, will not love a second time. Singular 
Diogenes I No sooner has that heart-rending occurrence 
fairly taken place, than he affects to regard it as a thing 
natural, of which there is nothing more to be said. ' One 

* highest Hope, seemingly legible in the eyes of an 
' Angel, had recalled him as out of Death-shadows into 
' celestial Life : but a gleam of Tophet passed over the 
» face of his Angel; he was rapt away in whirlwinds, 
' and heard the laughter of Demons. It was a Calenture,' 
adds he, ' whereby the Youth saw green Paradise-groves 

* in the waste Oeean-waters : a lying vision, yet not wholly 

* a lie, for he saw it.' But what things soever passed 
in him, when he ceased to see it ; what ragings and 
despairings soever Teafelsdr6ckh''s soul was the scene of, 
he has the goodness to conceal under a quite opaque 
cover of Silence^ We know it well ; the first mad 
paroxysm past, our brave Gneschen collected his dis- 



SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 153 

membered philosophies, and buttoned himself together ; 
he was meek, silent, or spoke of the weather, and the 
Journals : only by a transient knitting of those shaggy 
brows by some deep flash of those eyes, glancing one 
knew not whether with tear-dew or with fierce fire, — 
might you have guessed what a Gehenna was within ; 
that a whole Satanic School were spouting, though in- 
audibly, there. ^To consume your own choler, as some 
chimneys consume their own smoke ; to keep a whole 
Satanic School spouting, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a 
negative yet no slight virtue, nor one of the commonest 
in these times^ 

Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that 
in the strange measure he fell upon, there was not a 
touch of latent Insanity ; whereof indeed the actual 
condition of these Documents in Capricornus and 
Aquarius is no bad emblem. His so unlimited Wander- 
ings, toilsome enough, are without assigned or perhaps 
assignable aim ; internal Unrest seems his sole guidance ; 
he wanders, wanders, as if that curse of the Prophet had 
fallen on him, and he were ' made like unto a wheel/ 
Doubtless, too, the chaotic nature of these Paperbags 
aggravates our obscurity. Quite without note of pre- 
paration, for example, we come upon the following slip: 
' A peculiar feeling is it that will rise in the Traveller, 

* when turning some hill-range in his desert road, he 

* descries lying far below, embosomed among its groves 

* and green natural bulwarks, and all diminished to a 

* toybox, the fair Town, where so many souls, as it were 
' seen and yet unseen, are driving their multifarious 

* traffic. Its white steeple is then truly a starward- 

* pointing finger ; the canopy of blue smoke seems like a 



154 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* sort of Life-breath ; for always, of its own unity, 

* the soul gives unity to whatso it looks on with love ; 

* thus does the little Dwellingplace of men, in itself a 

* congeries of houses and huts, become for us an individual, 

* almost a person. But what thousand other thoughts 

* unite thereto, if the place has to ourselves been the arena 

* of joyous or mournful experiences j if perhaps the cradle 

* we were rocked in still stands there, if our Loving ones 
'still dwell there, if our buried ones there slumber!' 
Does Teufelsdrockh, as the wounded eagle is said to 
make for its own eyrie, and indeed military deserters, and 
all hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct in the 
direction of their birthland, — fly first, in this extremity, 
towards his native Entepfuhl ; but reflecting that there 
no help awaits him, take but one wistful look from the 
distance, and then wend elsewhither? 

Little happier seems to be his next flight : into the 
wilds of Nature ; as if in her mother-bosom he would 
seek healing. So at least we incline to interpret the 
following Notice, separated from the former by some 
considerable space, wherein, however, is nothing note- 
worthy : 

* Mountains were not new to him ; but rarely are 

* Mountains seen in such combined majesty and grace 

* as here. The rocks are of that sort called Primitive 
' by the mineralogists, w'hich always arrange themselves 
' in masses of a rugged, gigantic character ; which rug- 

* gedness, however, is here tempered by a singular airi- 

* ness of form, and softness of environment : in a climate 

* favourable to vegetation, the gray cliff, itself covered with 

* lichens, shoots up through a garment of foliage or ver- 

* dure ; and white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster 



SORROWS OP teufelsdrockh. 155 

* round the everlasting granite. In fine vicissitude, 

* Beauty alternates with Grandeur : you ride through 

* stony hollows, along strait passes, traversed by tor- 

* rents, overhung by high walls of rock ; now winding 

* amid broken shaggy chasms, and huge fragments ; 

* now suddenly emerging into some emerald valley, 

* where the streamlet collects itself into a Lake, and 

* man has again found a fair dwelling, ajud it seems as if 

* Peace had established herself in the bosom of Strength. 

* To Peace, however, in this vortex of existence, can 

* the Son of Time not pretend : still less if some Spectre 

* haunt him from the Past; and the Future is wholly a 

* Stygian Darkness, spectre-bearing. Reasonably might 

* the Wanderer exclaim to himself: Are not the gates 

* of this world's Happiness inexorably shut against thee ; 

* hast thou a hope that is not mad ? Nevertheless, one 

* may still murmur audibly, or in the original Greek if 

* that suit better : " Whoso can look on Death will start 

* at no shadows ?" 

* From such meditations is the Wanderer's attention 

* called outwards ; for now the Valley closes in abruptly, 

* intersected by a huge mountain mass, the stony water- 

* worn ascent of which is not to be accomplished on 

* horseback. Arrived aloft, he finds himself again lifted 

* into the evening sunset light; and cannot but pause, 

* and gaze round him, some moments there. An upland 

* irregular expanse of wold, where valleys in complex 

* branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging their 

* descent towards every quarter of the sky. The moun- 

* tain-ranges are beneath your feet, and folded together : 

* only the loftier summits look dow n here and there as 

* on a second plain ; lakes also lie clear and earnest in 



156 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 



their solitude. No trace of man now visible ; unless in- 
deed it were he who fashioned that little visible link of 
Highway, here, as would seem, scaling the inaccessible, 
to unite Province with Province. But sunwards, lo you 1 
how it towers sheer up, a world of Mountains, the 
diadem and centre of the mountain region ! A hundred 
and a hundred savage peaks, in the last light of Day ; 
all glowing, of gold and amethyst, like giant spirits of 
the wilderness ; there in their silence, in their solitude, 
even as on the night when Noah's Deluge first dried T 
Beautiful, nay solemn, was the sudden aspect to our 
Wanderer. He gazed over those stupendous masses 
with wonder, almost with longing desire; never till this 
hour had he known Nature, that she was One, that she 
was his Mother and divine. And as the ruddy glow was 
fading into clearness in the sky, and the Sun had now 
departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immensity, of Death 
and of Life, stole through his soul ; and he felt as if 
Death and Life were one, as if the Earth were not dead, 
as if the Spirit of the Earth had its throne in that splen- 
dour, and his own spirit were therewith holding com- 
munion. 

* The spell was broken by a sound of carriage- wheels. 
Emerging from the hidden Northward, to sink soon 
into the hidden Southward, came a gay barouche-and- 
four : it was open ; servants and postilions wore wed- 
ding-favours : that happy pair, then, had found each 
other, it was their marriage evening ! Few moments 
brought them near : Du Himmel ! It was Herr Tow- 
good and Blumine! With slight unrecognising 

salutation they passed me ; plunged down amid the 
neighbouring thickets, onwards, to Heaven, and to 



SORROWS OP TEUFELSDROCKH, 157 

* England; and I, in my friend Richter's words, I re- 

* mained alone, heJiind them, with the JSight.' 

Were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might 
be the place to insert an observation, gleaned long ago 
from the great Clothes- Volume, where it stands with 
quite other intent : * Some time before Smali-pox was 

* extirpated,' says the Professor, * there came a new 

* malady of the spiritual sort on Europe : I mean the 

* epidemic, now endemical, of View-hunting. Poets of 

* old date, being privileged with Senses, had also enjoyed 

* external Nature ; but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal 

* cup which holds good or bad liquor for us ; that is to 
' say, in silence, or with slight incidental commentary : 
' never, as 1 compute, till after the Sorrows of Werter, 

* was there man found who would say : Come let us 

* make a Description ! Having drunk the liquor, come 

* let us eat the glass! Of which endemic the Jenner is 

* unhappily still to seek.' Too true ! 

We reckon it more important to remark that the Pro- 
fessor's Wanderings, so far as his stoical and cynical 
envelopement admits us to clear insight, here first take 
their permanent character, fatuous or not. That basilisk- 
glance of the Barouche-and-four seems to have withered 
up what little remnant of a purpose may have still 
lurked in him : Life has become wholly a dark labyrinth ; 
wherein, through long years, our Friend, flying from 
spectres, must stumble about at random, and naturally 
with more haste than progress. 

Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even 

from afar, in this extraordinary world-pilgrimage of his ; 

the simplest record of which, were clear record possible, 

would fill volumes. Hopeless is the obscurity, un- 

15 



158 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

speakable the confusion. He glides from country to 
country, from condition to condition ; vanishing and re- 
appearing, no man can calculate how or where. Through 
all quarters of the world he wanders, and apparently 
through all circles of society. If in any scene, perhaps 
difficult to fix geographically, he settles for a time, and 
forms connexions, be sure he will snap them abruptly 
asunder. Let him sink out of sight as Private Scholar 
(Privatisirender), living by the grace of God, in some 
European capital, you may next find him as Hadjee in 
the neighbourhood of Mecca. It is an inexplicable 
Phantasm :igoria, capricious, quick-changing ; as if our 
Traveller, instead of limbs and highways, had transported 
himself by some wishing-carpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. 
The whole too imparted emblematically, in dim multi- 
farious tokens (as that collection of Street-Advertise- 
ments) ; with only some touch of direct historical notice 
sparingly interspersed : little light-islets in the world of 
haze ! So that, from this point, the Professor is more of 
an enigma than ever. In figurative language, we might 
say he becomes, not indeed a spirit, yet spiritualised, 
vaporised. Fact unparalleled in Biography : The river 
of his History, which we have traced from its tiniest 
fountains, and hoped to see flow onward, with' increasing 
current, into the ocean, here dashes itself over that ter- 
rific Lover's Leap ; and, as a mad-foaming cataract, 
flies wholly into tumultuous clouds of spray ! Low down 
it indeed collects again into pools and plashes; yet only 
at a great distance, and with difficulty, if at all, into a 
general stream. To cast a glance into certain of those 
pools and plashes, and trace whither they run, must, for 
a chapter or two, form the limit of our endeavour. 



SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH, 159 

For which end doubtless those direct historical No- 
tices, where they can be met with, are the best. Never- 
theless, of this sort too there occurs much, which, with 
our present light, it were questionable to emit. Teuf- 
elsdrockh, vibrating everywhere between the highest and 
the lowest levels, comes into contact with public History 
itself. For example, those conversations and relations 
with illustrious Persons, as Sultan Mahmoud, the Em- 
peror Napoleon, and others, are they not as yet rather of 
a diplomatic character than of a biographic ? The 
Editor, appreciating the sacredness of crowned heads, 
nay perhaps suspecting the possible trickeries of a 
Clothes-Philosopher, will eschew this province for the 
present : a new time may bring new insight and a dif- 
ferent duty. 

If we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior Purpose, 
for there was none, yet with what immediate outlooks ; 
at all events, in what mood of mind, the Professor under- 
took and prosecuted this world-pilgrimage, — -the answer 
is more distinct than favourable. * A nameless Unrest,' 
says he, * urged me forward ; to which the outward 
^ motion was some momentary lying solace. Whither 
' should I go ? My Loadstars were blotted out ; in that 

* canopy of grim fire shone no star. Yet forward must 

* I; the ground burnt under me ; there was no rest for 

* the sole of ray foot. I was alone, alone i Ever too the 

* strong inward longing shaped Fantasms for itself: 
'towards these, one after the other, must I fruitlessly 

* wander. A feeling I had that, for my fever-thirst, 

* there was and must be somewhere a healing Fountain. 

* To many fondly imagined Fountains, the Saints' Wells 

* of these days, did I pilgrim ; to great Men, to great 



A 



160 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* Cities, to great Events : but found there no healing'. 
' In strange countries^ as in the well-known ; in savage 

* deserts as in the press of corrupt civilisation, it was 
'ever the same : how could your Wanderer escape from 

^ * — his own Shadow ? Nevertheless still Forward ! I 

* felt as if in great haste ; to dp 1 saw not what. From 

* the depths of my own heart, it called to me, Forwards ! 

* The winds and the streams, and all Nature sounded to 

* me, Forwards 1 Ach Gott, I was even, once for ail, a 
' Son of Time.' 

From which is it not clear that the internal Satanic 
School was still active enough ? He says elsewhere ; 
'The Enchiridion of Epictetus I had ever with me, 
' often as my sole rational companion ; and regret to 
' mention that the nourishment it yielded was trifling.* 
Thou foolish Teufelsdrockh ! How could it else 1 Hadst 
thou not Greek enough to understand thus much : ' The 
end of 3Ian is an Action^ and not a Thought^ though it 
were the noblest J- 

' How I lived I ' writes he once : ' Friend, hast thou 
' considered the " rugged all-nourishing Earth," as So- 
' phocles well names her ; how she feeds the sparrow orj 
' the housetop, much more her darling, man ? While 
' thou stirrest and livest, thou hast a probability of 

* victual. My breakfast of tea has been cooked by a 
' Tartar woman, with water of the Amur, who wiped her 
' earthen-kettle with a horse-tail. I have roasted wild 
' eggs in the sand of Sahara ; I have awakened in Paris 

* Estrapades and Vienna Malzhins^ with do prospect of 
' breakfast beyond elemental liquid.. That I had my 
' Living to seek saved me from Dying, — by suicide. In 
' our busy Europe, is there not an everlasting demand 



SOUROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 161 

' for Intellect, in the chemical, mechanical, political, 
'religious, educational, commercial departments? In 

* Pagan countries, cannot one write Fetishes? Living! 
' Little knowest thou what alchemy is in an inventive 

* Soul ; how, as with its little finger, it can create pro- 

* vision enough for the body (of a Philosopher); and 

* then, as with both hands, create quite other than pro- 

* vision ; namely, spectres to torment itself withal.' 

Poor Teufelsdroc.kh ! Flying with Hunger always 
parallel to him ; and a whole Infernal Chace in his rear ; 
so that the countenance of Hunger is comparatively a 
friend's ! Thus must he, in the temper of ancient 
Cain, or of the modern Wandering Jew, save only that 
he feels himself not guilty and but suffering the pains of 
guilt, — wend to and fro with aimless speed. Thus must 
he, over the whole surface of the Earth (by fool-prints), 
write his Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh ; even as the great 
Goethe, in passionate words, must write his Sorrows of 
TVerter, before the spirit freed herself, and he could 
become a Man. Vain truly is the hope of your swiftest 
Runner * to escape from his own Shadow ! ' Never- 
theless, in these sick days, when the Born of Heaven 
first descries himself (about the age of twenty) in a 
world such as ours, richer than usual in two things : in 
Truths grown obsolete, and Trades grown obsolete, — 
/ what can the fool think but that it is all a Den of Lies, 
I wherein whoso will not speak Lies and act Lies, must 
I stand Idle, and despair ? Whereby it happens that, 
for your nobler minds, the publishing of some such 
Work of Art, in one or the other dialect, becomes almost 
a necessity. For what is it properly but an Altercation 
with the Devil, before you begin honestly Fighting him,? 
15* 



162 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Your Byron publishes his Sorrows of Lord George, m 
verse and in prose, and copiously otherwise : your Bona- 
parte represents his Sorroios of Napoleon Opera, in an 
ail-too stupendous style ; with music of cannon-vollies, 
and murder-shrieks of a world ; his stage-lights are the 
fires of Conflagration ; his rhyme and recitative are the 
tramp of embattled Hosts and the sound of falling Cities. 
— Happier is he who,^ like our Clothes-Philosopher, can 
write such matter, since it must be written, ou ihe in- 
sensible Earth, with his shoe-soles- only ; and also sau- 
vive the writing thereof I 



THE EVERLASTING NO. 163 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE EVERLASTING NO. 



Under tFie strange nebulous envelopment, wherein our 
Professor has now shrouded himself, no doubt but his 
spiritual nature is nevertheless progressive, and growing : 
for how can the ' Son of Time/ in any case, stand still ? 
We behold him, through those dinl years, in a state of 
crisis, of transition : his mad Pilgrimings, and general 
solution into aimless Discontinuity, what is all this but a 
mad Fermentation ; wherefrom, the fiercer it is, the 
clearer product will one day evolve itself? 

Such transitions are ever full of pain : thus the Eagle, 
when he moults, is sickly ; and, to attain his new beak, 
must harshly dash off the old one upon rocks. What 
Stoicism soever our Wanderer, in his individual acts and 
motions, may affect, it is clear that there is a hot fever 
of anarchy and misery raging within ; coruscations of 
which flash out : as, indeed, how could there be other? 
Have we not seen him disappointed, bemocked of Des- 
tiny, through long years? All that the young heart 
might desire and pray for has been denied ; nay, as in 
the last worst instance, offered and then snatched away. 
Ever an * excellent Passivity ; ' but of useful, reasonable 
Activity, essential to the former as Food to Hunger, 
nothing granted : till at length, in this wild Pilgrimage, 
he must forcibly seize for himself an Activity, though 



^ 



1(34 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

useless, unreasonable. Alas ! his cup of bitterness, 
which had been filling drop by drop, ever since that first 
'ruddy morning' in the Hinterschlag Gymnasium, was 
at the vepy lip ; and then with that poison-drop, of the 
Towgood-and-Blumine business, it runs over, and even 
hisses over in a deluge of foam. 

He himself says once, with more justness than ori- 
ginality : * Man is, properly speaking, based upon Hope, 

* he has no other possession but Hope ; this world of his 

* is emphatically the Place of Hope.' What then was 
our Professor's possession ? We see him, for the present, 
quite shut out from Hope ; looking not into the golden 
orient, but vaguely all around into a dim copper firma- 
ment, pregnant with earthquake and tornado. 

Alas, shut out from Hope, in a deeper sense than we 
yet dream of! For as he wanders wearisomely through 
this world, he has now lost all tidings of another and 
higher. Full of religion, or at least of religiosity, as our 
Friend has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, in 
those days, he was wholly irreligious : ' Doubt had dark- 

* ened into Unbelief,' says he; shade after shade goes 
' grimly over your soul, till you have the fixed, starless, 

* Tartarean black.' To such readers as have reflected, 
what can be called reflecting, on man's life, and happily 
discovered, in contradiction to much Profit-and-Loss 
Philosophy, speculative and practical, that Soul is not 
synonymous with stomach ; who understand, therefore, 
in our Friend's words, * that, for man's well-being, Faith 

* is properly the one thing needful ,• how, with it. Mar- 

* tyrs, otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame 

* and the cross ; and, without it. Worldlings puke up their 
' sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury :' to 



THE EVERLASTING NO. 



165 



such it will be clear that, for a pure moral nature, the loss 
of his religious Belief was the loss of everything. Un- 
happy young man ! All wounds, the crush of long-con- 
tinued Destitution, the stab of false Friendshifi, and of 
false Love, all wounds in thy so genial heart would have 
healed again, had not its life-warmth been withdrawn. 
Well might he exclaim, in his wild way : f Is there no 

* God, then ; but at best an absentee God, sitting idle, 
' ever since the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Uni- 
' verse, and seeing it go? Has the word Duty no mean- 
' ing : is what we call Duty no divine Messenger and 
' Guide, but a false earthly Fantasm, made up of Desire 
' and Fear, of emanations from the Gallows and from 
' Doctor Graham's Celestial-Bed ? Happiness of an ap- 

* proving Conscience ! Did not Paul of Tarsus, whom ad- 
' miring men have since named Saint, feel that he was " the 
' chief of sinners ; " and Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit 

* (Wohlgemuth), spend much of his time in fiddling? 
' Foolish Word-monger and Motive-grinder, that in thy 

* Logic-mill hast an earthly mechanism for the Godlike 

< itself, and wouldst fain grind me out Virtue from the 
' husks of Pleasure,— I tell thee, Nay 1 To the unr-fe- 
' generate Prometheus Vinctus of a man, it is ever the 
' bitterest aggravation of his wretchedness that he is con- 
' scious of Virtue, that he feels himself the victim not of 

* suffering only, but of injustice. What then ? Is the 
' heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some Passion ; 

< some bubble of the blood, bubbling in the direction 
' others profit by ? I know not : only this I know, If 
' what thou namest Happiness be our true aim, then are 
« we all astray. With Stupidity and sound Digestion 

* man may front much. But what, in these dull unima- 



166 SARTOR RESAIITUS. 

* ginative days, are the terrors of Conscience to the dis- 

* eases of the Liver ! Not on Morality, but on Cookery 

* let us build our stronghold : there brandishing our 
' fryingpan, as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the 

* Devil, and live at ease on the fat things which he has 

* provided for his Elect ! ' 

Thus must the bewildered Wanderer stand, as so many 
have done, shouting question after question into the Sybil- 
cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. 
It is all a grim Desert, this once fair world of his ; 
wherein is heard only the howling of wild beasts, or the 
shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men ; and no Pillar of 
Cloud by day, and no Pillar of Fire by night, any longer 
guides the Pilgrim. To such length has the spirit of 
Inquiry carried him. * But what boots it {loas tJiuts) ? ' 
cries he : 'it is but the common lot in this era. Not 

* having come to spiritual majority prior to the Siecle de 

* Louis Quinze, and not being born purely a Loghead 

* (Dummkopf), thou hadst no other outlook. The whole 
' world is, like thee, sold to Unbelief; their old Temples 

* of the Godhead, which for long have not been rainproof, 

* crumble down ; and men ask now : Where is the God- 

* head ; our eyes never saw him ! ' 

Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, to 
call our Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants as we 
all are, perhaps at no era of his life was he more deci- 
sively the Servant of Goodness, the Servant of God, than 
even now when doubting God's existence. * One cir- 
cumstance I note,* says he : ' after all the nameless 

* woe that Inquiry, which for me, what it is not always, 

* was genuine Love of Truth, had wrought me, I never- 
' theless still loved Truth, and would bate no jot of my 



THE EVERLASTING NO. 167 

* allegiance to her. " Truth ! " I cried, ** though the 
' Heavens crush me for following her : no Falsehood ! 

* though a whole celestial Lubberland were the price of 

* Apostacy." In conduct it was the same. Had a 

* divine Messenger from the clouds, or miraculous Hand- 

* writing on the wall, convincingly proclaimed to me 

* This shall thou do, with what passionate readiness, as 
' I often thought, would I have done it, had it been leap- 

* ing into the infernal Fire ! Thus, in spite of all 

* Motive-grinders, and Mechanical Profit-and-Loss Phi- 

* losophies, with the sick ophthalnsia and hallucination 
' they had brought on, was the Infinite nature of Duty 

* still dimly present to me : living without God in the 

* world, of God's light I was not utterly bereft ; if my 

* as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing, 

* could nowhere see him, nevertheless in my heart He 
' was present, and His heaven-written Law still stood 

* legible and sacred there.' 

Meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and temporal 
and spiritual destitutions, what must the Wanderer, in 
his silent soul, have endured ! * The painfullest feeling,' 
writes he, ' is that of your own Feebleness •( t/iri^ro/if) ; 

* ever, as the English Milton says, to be weak is the true 

* misery. And yet of your Strength there is and can be 
' no clear feeling, save by what you have prospered in, 

* by what you have done. Between vague wavering Ca- 

* pability and fixed indubitable Performance, what a 

* difference! A certain inarticulate Self-consciousness 

* dwells dimly in us ; which only our Works can render 

* articulate and decisively discernible. Our Works are 
' the mirror wherein the spirit first sees its natural linea- 

* ments. Hence, too, the folly of that impossible Precept, 



168 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* Know thyself; till it be translated into this partially 

* possible one, Know lohat thou canst work at. '{ 

•But for me, so strangely un prosperous had I been, 
' the net result of my Workings amounted as yet simply 

* to — Nothing. How then could I believe in my Strength, 

* when there was as yet no mirror to see it in 1 Ever 

* did this agitating, yet as I now perceive, quite frivolous 

* question, remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a certain 

* Faculty, a certain Worth, such even as the most have 

* not : or art thou the completest Dullard of these mo- 

* dern times ? Alas! the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in 
' yourself j and how could I believe? Had not my first, 
' last Faith in myself, when even to me the Heavens 

* seemed laid open, and I dared to love, been all too- 

* cruelly belied ? The speculative Mystery of Life grew 

* ever more mysterious to me : neither in the practical 

* Mystery had 1 made the slightest progress, but been 

* everywhere buffeted, foiled, and contemptuously cast 

* out. A feeble unit in the middle of a threatening In- 
' finitude, I seemed to have nothing given me but eyes, 

* whereby to discern my own wretchedness. Invisible 

* yet impenetrable walls, as of Enchantment, divided me 

* from all living : was there, in the wide world, any true 

* bosom I could press trustfully to mine ? O Heaven, No, 
' there was none ! I kept a lock upon my lips : why 

* should I speak much with that shifting variety of 
'so-called Friends, in whose withered, vain, and too 

* hungry souls, Friendship was but an incredible tradi- 
' tion ? In such cases, your resource is to talk little, 

* and that little mostly from the Newspapers. Now when 

* I look back, it was a strange isolation I then lived in. 

* The men and women around me, even speaking with 



•^THE EVERI.ASTING NO. 169 

** rae, were but Figures ; I had, praGtically, forgotten that 
■' they were alive, that they were not merely automatic. 
'* In midst of their crowded streets, and assemblages, I 
^ walked solitary^ and (except as it was ray own heart, 
' not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also, as 

* the tiger in his jungle. Some comfort it would have 
** been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted 
' and tormented of the Devil ; for a Hell, as I imagine, 

* without Lifa, though only diabolic Life, were more 
^ frightfuJ : but in our age of DownpuUing and Disbelief, 
' the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so 

* much as believe in a ©evil. To me the Universe was 

* all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hosti- 
■* lity:: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable. Steam-engine, 
^ rolling on., in its dea-d indifference, to grind me limb 

* from limb, O the vast, gloomy, solitary Golgotha, and 

* Mill of Death! Why was the Living banished thither 
' companionless., conscious ? Why if there is no Devil ; 

* nay, unless the Devil is your God ? ' 

A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, 
moreover, as the worst aggravation to them, the iron con- 
stitution even of a Teufelsdrockh threaten to fail ? We 
conjecture that he has known sickness^ and, in spite of 
his locomotive habits, perhaps sickness of the chronic 
sort. Hear this, for example: * How beautiful to die of 

* broken-heart, on Paper! Quite another thing in Practice; 

* every window of your Feeling, even of your Mtellect, 

* as it were, begrimed and mud-bespattered, so that no 

* pure ray can enter ; a whole Drugshop in your inwards ; 

* the foredone soul drowning slowly in quagmires of 

* Disgust 1 ' 

Putting all which external and internal miseries to- 
la 



170 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

gether, may we not find in the following sentences, quite 
in our Professor's still vein, significance enough : ' From 
Suicide a certain after-shine (Nachschein) of Christi- 
anity withheld me : perhaps also a certain indolence 
of character ; for, was not that a remedy I had at any 
time within reach? Often, however, was there a ques- 
tion present to me : Should some one now, at the turning 
of that corner, blow thee suddenly out of Space, into 
the other World, or other No-world, by pistol-shot, — 
how were it? On which ground, too, 1 have often, in 
sea-storms and sieged cities and other death-scenes, 
exhibited an imperturbability, which passed, falsely 
enough, for courage.' 

* So had it lasted,' concludes the Wanderer, * so had 
it lasted, as in bitter protracted Death-agony, through 
long years. The heart within me, unvisited by any 
heavenly devvdrop, was smouldering in sulphurous, 
slow-consuming fire. Almost since earliest memory I 
had shed no tear ; or once only when I, murmuring 
half-audibly, recited Faust's Deathsong, that wild Selig 
der den er im Siegesglanze Jindet (Happy whom he 
finds in Battle's splendour), and thought that of this 
last Friend even 1 was not forsaken, that Destiny itself 
could not doom me not to die. Having no hope, neither 
had I any definite fear, were it of Man or of Devil : 
nay, I often felt as if it might be solacing, could the 
Arch-Devil himself, though in Tartarean terrors, but 
rise to me, that I might tell him a little of my mind. 
And yet, strangely enough, I lived in a continual, inde- 
finite, pining fear ; tremulous, pusillanimous, appre- 
hensive of I knew not what: it seemed as if all things 
in the Heavens above and the Earth beneath would 



THE EVERLASTINCw NO, 171 

* hurt me ; as if the Heavens and the Earth were but 

* boundless Jaws of a devouring Monster, wherein I, 
' palpitating, waited to be devoured. 

* Full of such humour, and perhaps the miserablest 

* man in the whole French Capital or Suburbs, was I, 

* one sultry Dogday, after much perambulation, toiling 

* along the dirty little Rue Saint Thomas de I'Enfer, 
' among civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, and 
' over pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace ; 

* whereby doubtless my spirits were little cheered ; when, 

* all at once, there rose a Thought in me, and I asked 

* myself: '* What art thou afraid of? Wherefore, like 

* a coward, dost thou for ever pip and whimper, and 

* go cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! 

* what is the sum-total of the worst that lies before 

* thee ? Death ? Well, Death ; and say the pangs of 

* Tophet too, and all that the Devil and Man may, 

* will, or can do against thee ! Hast thou not a heart ; 

* canst thou not suffer whatso it be ; and, as a Child 

* of Freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet itself 

* under thy feet, while it consumes thee ? Let it come, 
'then; I will meet it and defy it?" And as I so 

* thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over ray 

* whole soul ; and I shook base Fear away from me for 

* ever. I was strong, of unknown strength ; a spirit, 

* almost a god. Ever from that time, the temper of my 
'■ misery was changed : not Fear or whining Sorrow was 

* it, but Indignation and grim fire-eyed Defiance.' 

* Thus had the Everlasting No {das Eivige Nein) 

* pealed authoritatively through all the recesses of my 

* Being, of my Me ; and then was it that my whole Me 

* stood up, in native God-created majesty, and with 



172 SARTOR RESARTUSi. 

* emphasis recorded its Protest. Such a Protest, the most 

* important transaction in Life, may that same Indigna^ 

* tion and Defiance, in a psychological point of view, be 

* fitly called. The Everlasling No had said :: "Behold, 

* thou art fatherless, outcast, and the Universe is mine 
' (the Devil's) ; " to vi^hich my whole Me now made- 

* answer : " / am not thine, but Free,^ and forever hate 

* thee 1 " 

• It is from this hour that I incline to date my Spi- 

* ritual New-birth, or Baphometic Fire-baptism ;; perhaps. 
' I directly thereupon began to be a Man.' 



CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 173 



CHAPTER VIII. 



CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 



Though, after this * Baphometic Fire-baptism ' of his, 
our Wanderer signifies that his Unrest was but in- 
creased ; as, indeed * Indignation and Defiance,' espe- 
cially against things in general, are not the most peace- 
able inmates ; yet can the Psychologist surmise that it 
was no longer a quite hopeless Unrest ; that henceforth 
it had at least a fixed centre to revolve round. For the 
fire-baptised soul, long so scathed and thunder-riven, 
here feels its own Freedom, which feeling is its Bapho- 
metic Baptism : the citadel of its whole kingdom it has 
thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpugnable ; 
outwards from which the remaining dominions, not in- 
deed without hard battling, will doubtless by degrees be 
conquered and pacificated. Under another figure, we 
might say, if in that great moment, in the Rue Saint 
Thomas de FEnfer, the old inward Satanic School was 
not yet thrown out of doors, it received peremptory 
judicial notice to quit ; — whereby, for the rest, its howl- 
chantings, Ernulphus-cursings, and rebellious gnashings 
of teeth, might, in the mean while, become only the more 
tumultuous, and difScult to keep secret. 

Accordingly, if we scrutinize these Pilgrimings well, 
there is perhaps discernible henceforth a certain incipient 
method in their madness. Not wholly as a Spectre does 
16* 



1T4 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Teufelsdrockh now storm through the world ; at worst as: 
a spectre-fighting Man, nay that will one day be a; 
Spectre-queller. If pilgriming restlessly to so many 
' Saints' Wells,' and ever without quenching of his thirst,, 
he nevertheless finds little secular wells,, whereby from 
time to time some alleviation is ministered. In a word,, 
he is now, if not ceasing,, yet intermitting to * eat his 
own heart;' and clutches round him outwardly, on the 
NoT-ME for wholesoraer food. Does not the following; 
glimpse exhibit him in a. much mare natural state ? 

• * Towns also and Cities, especially the ancient, I 
' failed not to look upon with interest. How beautiful 
' to see thereby, as through a long vista, into the remote 
' Time ; to have, as it were, an actual section of almost 
*■ the earliest Past brought safe into the Present, and set 

* before your eyes! There, in that old City, was a live 
' ember of Culinary Fire put down, say only two. 

* thousand years ago ; and, there, burning more or less 

* triumphantly,, with, sufih fuel as the region yielded, it 

* has burnt, and still burns,, and thou thyself seest the 
' very smoke thereof. Ah! and the far more mysterious 
' live ember of Vital Fire was then also put down there ;. 

* and stiJl miraculously burns and spreads ; and the 
' smoke and ashes thereof (in these Judgment-Halls 
' and Churchyards), and its bellows-engines- (in these 

* Churches), thou still seest ; and its flame^ looking out 

* from every kind countenance, and every hateful one,. 

* still warms thee or scorches thee. 

* Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief results, 
"are aeriform, mystic, and. preserved in Tradition oniy :; 
^ such, are his Forms of Government, with the Authority 
*thjey rest on ; his Customs,, or Fashions both of Cioth- 



CENTK-E OF rNDIFFERENCIT.. ITS 

' habits and of Soul-habits ; much more his collective 
^ stock of Handicrafts,, the whole Faculty he has required 
''of manipulatisng Nature : all these things,, as indis- 
•^ pensable and priceless as they are,, cannot in any way 
' be fixed under lock and key, but must flit, spirit-like, 
'on impalpable vehicles, from Father to Son ;. if you de- 
' mand sight of them,, they are nowhere to be naet with. 
' Visible Ploughmen and Hammermen there have been,, 
'ever from Cain and Tubalcain downwards : but where 

* does your accumulated Agricultural, Metallurgic,, and 
' other Manufacturing Skill lie warehoused ?' It 

* transmits itself on the atmospheric air,, on the sun's 

* rays (by Hearing and by Vision ; it is a thing 

* aeriform, impalpable,, of quite spiritual sort. In like 
' manner, ask me not,. "Where are the Laws ; where is the 

* Government? In. vain wiJt thou, go to Schonbrunn^ 
^ to Downing Street, to the Palais Bourbon : thou, fiiidest 
' nothing there, but brick or stone houses, and some 
' bundles of Papers tied with tape. Where then is that 
' same cunningly-devised almighty Government of 
' theirs to be laid hands on ? Everywhere,, yet nowhere : 
' seen only in its works, this too is a thing aeriform, in- 

* visible ; or if you will, mystic and miraculous. So spi- 

* ritual (geistig) is our whole daily Life : all that we do- 
'-springs out of Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force ; only 
'' like a little Cloud-image,, or Armida's Palace, air-built, 
'does the Actual body itself forth from the great mystic 
*• Deep. 

' Visible and tansgible products of the Past, again, I 
'^ reckon up to the extent of three : Cities, with their 
^ Cabinets and Arsenals ;. then, tilled Fields, to either or 
*• to both, of which, divisions Roads with their Bridges. 



176 , SARTOR RESARTUS. 

may belong ; and thirdly Books. In vt'hich third 

truly, the last-invented, lies a worth far surpassing 
that of the two others. Wondrous indeed is the virtue 
of a true Book. Not like a dead City of stones, yearly 
crumbling, yearly needing repair; more like a tilled 
Field, but then a spiritual Field : like a spiritual Tree, 
let me rather say, it stands from year to year, and from 
age to age (we have Books that already number some 
hundred-and-fiifty human ages) ; and yearly comes its 
new produce of Leaves (Commentaries, Deductions, 
Philosophical, Political Systems ; or were it only Ser- 
mons, Pamphlets, Journalistic Essays), every one of 
which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, for it can per- 
suade men. O thou who art able to write a Book, 
which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a 
man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City- 
builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name 
Conqueror or City-burner ! Thou too art a Conqueror 
and Victor ; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil : 
thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and 
metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a 
Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto 
all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim. — Fool ! why 
journeyest thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervour, 
to gaze on the stone Pyramids of Geeza, or the clay 
ones of Sacchara ? These stand there, as I can tell 
thee, idle and inert, looking over the Desert, foolishly 
enough, for the last three thousand years : but canst 
thou not open thy Hebrew Bible, then, or even 
Luther's Version thereof?' 
No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance not in 
Battle, yet on some Battle-field ; which, we soon gather, 



CENTRE OF INDIFFEKEUfCE, 177 

must be that of Wagram ; so that here, for once, is ai 
certain approximation, to distinctness of date.. Omitting 
much, let us impart what follows : 

*' Horrible enough I A whole Marchfeld strewed with^ 
*■ shell-splinters, cannon--shot, ruined tumbrils, and dead 
' men and horses ; stragglers still remaining not so much 
' as buried. And those red mould heaps r aye, there lie 
'the "Shells of Men, out of which all the Life and Virtue 
' has been blown ; and now are they swept together, and 
' crammed down out of sight, like blown Egg-shells ! — 

* Did Nature, when she bade the Donau bring down his 
' mould-cargoes from the Carinthian and Carpathian 
*■ Heights, and spread them out here into the softest, 
*■ richest level, — intend thee, O Marchfeld, for a corn- 

* bearing Nursery, whereon her children might be 
' nursed ; or for a Cockpit, wherein they might the more 

* commodiously be throttled and tattered I Were thy. 

* three broad Highways, meeting here from the ends of 
' Europe, made for Ammunition-waggons, then ? Were 

* thy Wagrams and Stillfrieds but so many ready-built 
' Casemates, wherein lihe house of Hapsburg might 

* batter with artillery, and with artillery be battered ? 
' Konig Qttokar,, amid yonder hillocks,, dies under Ro- 

* dolf's truncheon ; here Kaiser Franz falls a-swoon 

* under Napoleon's *.: within which five centuries, to omit 
^ the others, how has- thy breast, fair Plain, been defaced 
' and defiled ! The greensward is torn up and trampled^ 
' down ;" man's fond care of it, his fruit-trees, hedge- 
' rows, and pleasant-dwellings, blown away with gun- 

* powder ; and the kind seedfield lies a desolate, hideous 
' Place of Sculls. — Nevertheless, Nature is at work ;. 
' neither shall these Powder-Devilkins with their utmost 



178 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 



' devilry gainsay her : but all that gore and carnage will 
' be shrouded in, absorbed into manure ; and next year 

* the Marclifeld will be green, nay greener. Thrifty un- 

* wearied Nature, ever out of our great waste educing 

* some little profit of thy own,— how dost thou, from the 

* very carcass of the Killer, bring Life for the Living ! 

* What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the 

* net purport and upshot of war ? To my own know- 

* ledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British 

* village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. 
'From these, by certain "Natural Enemies" of the 
' French, there are successively selected, during the 
' French war, say thirty able-bodied men : Dumdrudge, at 
' her own expense, has suckled and nursed them; she 

* has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to 
' manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one 
' can weave, another build, another hammer, and the 

* weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Ne- 
' vertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are 
' selected ; all dressed in red ; and shipped away, at the 
' public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only 

* to the south of Spain ; and fed there till wanted. And 

* now to that same spot in the south of Spain, are thirty 

* similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, 
'in like manner wending: till at length, after infinite 
' effort, the two parties come into actual juxta-position ; 

* and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in 
' his hand. Straightway the word " Fire ! " is given ; 
'and they blow the souls out of one another: and in 
' place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has 
' sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew 

* shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel ? Busy as 



CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 179 

* the Devii is, not the smallest 1 They lived far enough 

* apart ; were the entirest strangers ; nay, in so wide a 

* Universe, there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, 
' some mutual helpfulness between them. How then ? 

* Simpleton ! their Governors had fallen out ; and, instead 

* of shooting one another, had the cunning to make 

* these poor blockheads shoot. — Alas, so is it in Deutsch- 

* land, and hitherto in all other lands ; still as of old, 
' " what devilry soever Kings do, the Greeks must pay the 
' piper!" — In that fiction of the English Smollett, it is 

* true, the final Cessation of War is perhaps prophetically 

* shadowed forth ; where the two Natural Enemies, in 

* person, take each a Tobacco-pipe, filled with Brim- 

* stone ; light the same, and smoke in one another's 

* faces, till the weaker gives in : but from such predicted 

* Peace-Era, what blood-filled trenches, and contentious 
' centuries, may still divide us!' 

Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, 
look away from his own sorrows, over the many-coloured 
world, and pertinently enough note what is passing 
there. We may remark, indeed, that for ihe matter of 
spiritual culture, if for nothing else, perhaps few periods 
of his life were richer than this. Internally, there is 
the most momentous instructive Course of Practical 
Philosophy, with Experiments, going on ; towards the 
right comprehension of which his Peripatetic habits, 
favourable to Meditation, might help him rather than 
hinder. Externally, again, as he wanders to and fro, 
there are, if for the longing heart little substance, yet 
for the seeing eye sights enough : in these so boundless 
Travels of his, granting that the Satanic School was even 
partially kept down, what an incredible Knowledge of 



180 SAUrOR RESAfeTVS. 

our Planet, and its Inhabitants and their Works, that Js 
to say, of all knowable things, might not Teufelsdrockh 
acquire ! 

* I have read in most Public Libraries,' says he, * in- 
■* eluding those of Constantinople and Sarmacand : in 
' most Colleges, except the Chinese Mandarin ones, I have 

* studied, or seen that there was no studying. Unknown 

* Languages have I oftenest gathered from their natural 

* repertory, the Air, by my organ of Hearings Statistics, 

* Geographies, Topographies came, through the Eye, 

* almost of their own accord. The ways of Man, how 

* he seeks food, and warmth, and protection for himself, 

* in most regions, are occularly known to me. Like th-e 

* great Hadrian, I meted out much of the terraqueous 

* Globe with a pair of Compasses that belonged to 

* myself only. 

* Of great Scenes, why speak t Three summer days, 

* I lingered reflecting, and even composing [dichtete), 
'* by the Pine-chasms of Vaucluse; and in that clear 

* Lakelet moistened my bread. 1 have sat under the 

* palm-trees of Tadmor ; smoked a pipe among the ruins 

* of Babylon. The great Wall of China I have seen; 

* and can testify that it is of grey brick, coped and 

* covered with granite, and shows only second-rate 

* masonry. — Great Events, also, have I not witnessed? 

* Kings sweated down {ausgemergelt) into Berlin-and- 

* Milan Customhouse-officers; the World well won, and 

* the World well lost ; oftener than once a hundred 

* thousand individuals shot (by each other) in one day. 

* All kindreds and peoples and nations dashed together, 

* and shifted and shovelled into heaps, that they might 

* ferment there, and in time unite. The birth-pangs of 



CENfRfi OF iNDlFFERENCfi. 181 

"* Democracy, wherewith convulsed Europe was groaning 

* in cries that reached Heaven, could not escape me. 

* For great Men 1 have ever had the warmest pre- 

* dilection ; and can perhaps boast that few such in this 
' era have wholly escaped me. Great Men are the 

* inspired (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine 

* Book of Revelations, whereof a Chapter is com- 

* pleted from epoch to epoch, and by some named His- 

* TORY ; to which inspired Texts your numerous talented 

* men, and your innumerable untalented men, are the 

* better or worse exegetic Commentaries, and waggon- 
' load of too-stupid, heretical or orthodox, weekly Ser- 

* mons. For my study, the inspired Texts themselves ! 

* Thus did T not, in very early days, having disguised 

* me as tavern-waiter, stand behind the field-chairs, 

* under that shady Tree at Treisnitz by the Jena High- 
' way ; waiting upon the great Schiller and greater 

* Goethe ; and hearing what I have not forgotten. 
« For ' 

But at this point the Editor recalls his principle 



of caution, some time ago laid down, and must suppress 
much. Let not the sacredness of Laurelled, still more, 
of Crowned Heads, be tampered with. Should we, at a 
future day, find circumstances altered, and the time 
come for Publication, then may these glimpses into the 
privacy of the Illustrious be conceded ; which for the 
present were little better than treacherous, perhaps 
traitorous Eavesdroppings. Of Lord Byron, therefore, 
of Pope Pius, Emperor Tarakwang, and the * White 
Water-roses' (Chinese Carbonari) with their mysteries, 
no notice here ! Of Napoleon himself we shall only, 
glancing from afar, remark that Teufelsdrockh's rela- 
17 



182 SARTOR RESARTtS. 

tion to him seems to have been of a very varied character. 
At first we firid our poor Professor on the point of being 
shot as a spy ; then taken into private conversation, even 
pinched on the ear, yet presented with no money : at 
last indignantly dismissed, almost thrown out of doors, 
as an ' Ideologist.' ' He himself,' says the Professor, 
was among the completest Ideologists, at least Ideo- 
praxists : in the Idea [in der Idee) he lived, moved, 
and fought. The man was a Divine Missionary, 
though unconscious of it ; and preached, through the 
cannon's throat, that great doctrine, La carriere ouverte 
aux talens (The Tools to him that can handle them), 
which is our ultimate Political Evangel, wherein alone 
can Liberty lie. Madly enough he preached, it is 
true, as Enthusiasts and first Missionaries are wont, 
with imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant ; yet 
as articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call 
him, if you will, an American Backwoods-man, who 
had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innu- 
merable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong 
liquor, rioting, and even theft ; whom, notwithstanding, 
the peaceful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts the 
boundless harvest, bless.' 
More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufels- 
drockh's appearance and emergence (we know not well 
whence) in the solitude of the North Cape, on that June 
Midnight. He has a * light-blue Spanish cloak ' hang- 
ing round him, as his * most commodious, principal, 
indeed sole upper-garment; ' and stands there, on the 
World-promontory, looking over the infinite Brine, like 
a little blue Belfry (as we figure), now motionless 
indeed, yet ready, if stirred, to ring quaintest changes. 



CENTRE OP INDIFFERENCE. 183 

* Silence as of Death,' writes he ; ' for Midnight, even 

* in the Arctic latitudes, has its character : nothing but 

* the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle of 
' that slow-heaving Polar Ocean, over which in the 

* utmost North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if 

* he too were slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch 

* wrought of crimson and cloth of gold ; yet does his light 

* stream over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous fire- 

* pillar, shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide itself 

* under my feet. In such moments, Solitude also is in- 

* valuable ; /for who would speak, or be looked on, when 

* behind him lies all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, 

* except the watchmen ; and before him the silent Im- 

* mensity, and Palace of the Eternal, whereof our Sun 

* is but a porch-lamp?f 

' Nevertheless, in this solemn moment, comes a man, 

* or monster, scrambling from among the rock-hollows ; 

* and, shaggy, huge as the Hyperborean Bear, hails me 

* in Russian speech : most probably, therefore, a Russian 

* Smuggler. With courteous Brevity, I signify my 

* indifference to contraband trade, my humane intentions, 
' yet strong wish to be private. In vain : the monster, 
' counting doubtless on his superior stature, and minded 

* to make sport for himself, or perhaps profit, were it 

* with murder, continues to advance ; ever assailing me 

* with his importunate train-oil breath; and now has 
^ advanced, till we stand both on the verge of the rock, 

* the deep sea rippling greedily down below. What 

* argument will avail ? On the thick Hyperborean, 

* cherubic reasoning, seraphic eloquence were lost. Pre- 
' pared for such extremity, I, deftly enough, whisk aside 

* one step ; draw out, from my interior reservoirs, a suffi- 



184 SARTOR RESARTITS. 

' cient Birmingham Horse-pistol, and say " Be so^ 
' obliging as retire, Friend {Er ziehe sich zuruck,. 

* Freund), and with promptitude ! " This logic even 
' the Hyperborean understands : fast enough,^ with apo- 
' logetic, petitionary growl, he sidles off; and, except for 

* suicidal as well as homicidal purposes, need not 

* return^ 

' Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gunpowder : 
' that it makes all men alike tall. Nay, if thou be 
' cooler, cleverer than I, if thou have more 3Iind, though 

* all but no Bodi/ whatever, then canst thou kill me first, 

* and art the taller. Hereby, at last, is the Goliath 
' powerless, and the David resistless; savage Animalism 
' is nothing, inventive Spiritualism is alL 

*^ With respect to Duels, indeed, I have my own ideas. 

* Few things, in this so surprising world, strike me with 

* more surprise. Two little visual Spectra of men, 
' hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the midst of 
' the Unfathomable, and to dissolve therein, at any 
' rate, very soon, — make pause at the distance of twelve 

* paces asunder ; whirl round ; and, simultaneously by 
' the cunningest mechanism,^ explode one another into 

* Dissolution ; and off-hand become Air, and Non-extant! 

* Deuce on it {verdammt)y the little spitfires ! — -Nay, 

* I think with old Hugo von Trimberg : ?' God must 

* needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, to see his 

* wondrous Mannikins here below.'*' 

But amid these specialities, let us not forget the greaJ 
generality, which is our chief quest here : How prospered 
the inner man of Teufelsdrockh under so much outward 
shifting? Does Legion still lurk, in him, though ce-* 



CENTRE OP INDIFFERENCE. 185 

pressed ; or has he exorcised that Devil's Brood ? We 
can answer that the symptoms continue promising. 
Experience is the grand spiritual Doctor ; and with him 
Teufelsdrockh has now been long a patient, swallowing 
many a bitter bolus. Unless our poor Friend belong to 
the numerous class of Incurables, which seems not likely, 
some cure will doubtless be effected. We should rather 
say that Legion, or the Satanic School, was now pretty 
well extirpated and cast out, but next to nothing intro- 
duced in its room ; whereby the heart remains, for the 
while, in a quiet but no comfortable state. 

* At length, after so much roasting,' thus writes our 
Autobiographer, * I was what you might name calcined. 

* Pray only that it be not rather, as is the more frequent 

* issue, reduced to a caput-mortuitm ! But in any case, 

* by mere dint of practice, I had grown familiar with many 

* things. Wretchedness was still wretched ; but I could 

* now partly see through it, and despise it. Which 

* highest mortal, in this inane Existence, had I not found 

* a Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted ; and, when I 

* looked through his brave garnitures, miserable enough ? 
' Thy wishes have all been sniffed aside, thought I : but 
' what, had they even been all granted ! Did not the 

* Boy Alexander weep because he had not two Planets 

* to conquer ; or a whole Solar System ; or after that, a 

* whole Universe? Acli Gott, when I gazed into these 

* Stars, have they not looked down on me as if with pity 
' from their serene spaces ; like Eyes glistening with 

* heavenly tears over the little lot of man ! Thousands 

* of human generations, all as noisy as our own, have 

* been swallowed up of Time, and there remains no wreck 
' of them any more ; and A returns and Orion and Sirius 

17* 



186 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

' and the Pleiades are still shining in their courses, cfeair 

* and young, as when the Shepherd first noted them in- 
' the plain of Shinar. Pshaw ! what is this paltry little 
' Dog-cage of an Earth ;. what art thou that sittest whining 
' there ? Thou art still Nothing, Nobody : true ; but 

* who then is Something, Somebody ? For thee the 

* Family of Man has no use ; it rejects thee ; thou art 
'wholly as a dissevered limb: so be it; perhaps it i& 

* better so ! ^ 

Too heavy-laden Teufelsdrockh ! Yet surely his bands 
are loosening : one day he will hurl the burden far from 
him, and bound forth free, and with a second youth. 

* This,' says our Professor, ' was the Centre of In- 

* difference I had now reached ; through which whosa 
'travels from the Negative Pole to the Positive must 
' necessarily pass/ 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 187 



CHAPTER IX. 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 



'Temptations in the Wilderness f exclaims Teufels- 
drockh : ' Have we not all to be tried with such 1 Not 
' so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by birth, be 

* dispossessed. Our Life is compassed round with Ne- 

* cessity ; yet is the meaning of Life itself no other than 
' Freedom, than Voluntary Force : thus have we a war- 

* fare ; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought battle. 
' For the God-given mandate, ■TT^or^ thou in Welldoing ^ 

* lies mysteriously written, in Promethean, Prophetic 

* Characters, in our hearts ; and leaves us no rest, night 

* or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed ; till it burn 
' forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted Gospel of Freedom!'^ 

* And as the clay-given mandate. Eat thou and be Jilled^ 

* at the same time, persuasively proclaims itself through 

* every nerve,^must there not be a confusion, a contest, 

* before the better Influence can become the upper? 

' To me nothing seems more natural than that the 

* Son of Man, when such God-given mandate first 

* prophetically stirs within him, and the Clay must now 

* be vanquished or vanquish, — should be carried of the 

* spirit into grim Solitudes, and there fronting the 

* Tempter do grimmest battle with him ; defiantly setting^ 

* him at nought, till he yield and fly» Name it as we 

* choose J with or without visible Deviij whether in the 



188 SARTOR RESARTtS. 

* natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous 
' moral Desert of selfishness and baseness, — to such 
' Temptation are we all called. (Unhappy if we are not ! 
' Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine 

* hand-writing has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in 

* true sun-splendour ; but quivers dubiously amid meaner 
' lights : or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under 
' earthly vapours |-40ur Wilderness is the wide World 
' in an Atheistic Century ; our Forty Days are long years 

* of suffering and fasting : nevertheless, to these also 
' comes an end.^; Yes, to me also was given, if not Vic- 

* tory, yet the consciousness of Battle, and the resolve 

* to persevere therein while life or faculty is left. To 

* me also, entangled in the enchanted forests, demon- 
' peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was given, 

* after weariest wanderings, to work out my way into 

* the higher sunlit slopes — of that Mountain which has 

* no summit, or whose summit is in Fleaven only ! ' 

He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure ; as 
figures are, once for all, natural to him : * Has not thy 
' Life been that of most sufficient men {tuclitigen Man- 

* ner) thou hast known in this generation ? An outflush 

* of foolish young Enthusiasm, like the first fallow-crop, 

* wherein are as many weeds as valuable herbs : this all 
' parched away, under the Droughts of practical and 

* spiritual Unbelief; as Disappointment, in thought and 

* act, often-repeated gave rise to Doubt, and Doubt gra- 

* dually settled into Denial ! If I have had a second- 

* crop, and now see the perennial greensward, and sit 

* under umbrageous cedars, which defy all Drought (and 

* Doubt ) : herein too, be the Heavens praised, I am not 
' without examples, and even exemplars/ 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 189 

So that for Teufelsdrockh also there has been a 

* glorious revolution : ' these mad shadow-hunting and 
shadow-hunted Pilgrimings of his, were but some purify- 
ing * Temptation in the Wilderness,' before his apostolic 
work (such as it was) could begin ; which Temptation is 
now happily over, and the Devil once more worsted ! 
Was ' that high moment in the Rue de V Enfer,' then, 
properly the turning point of the battle; when the Fiend 
said, Worship me or be torn in shreds, and was answered 
valiantly with an Apage Satanas 1 — Singular Teufels- 
drockh, would thou hadst told thy singular story in plain 
words ! But it is fruitless to look there, in those Paper- 
bags, for such. Nothing but inuendoes, figurative 
crotchets : a typical Shadow, fitfully w'avering, prophetico- 
satiric ; no clear logical Picture. * How paint to the 
' sensual eye,' asks he once, ' what passes in the Holy- 
' of-Holies of Man's Soul ; in what words, known to 

* these profane times, speak even afar off of the unspeak- 
' able ] ' We ask in turn ; Why perplex these times, 
profane as they are, with needless obscurity, by omission 
and by commission ? Not mystical only is our Professor, 
but whimsical ; and involves himself, now more than 
ever, in eye-bewildering chiaroscuro. Successive glimpses, 
here faithfully imparted, our more gifted readers must 
endeavour to combine for their own behoof. 

He says: 'The hot Harmattan-wind had raged itself 

* out ; its howl went silent within me ; and the long-deaf- 

* ened soul could now hear. I paused in my wild wan- 

* derings ; and sat me down to wait, and consider ; for it 
' was as if the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed to 

* surrender, to renounce utterly, and say : Fly, then, false 
^ shadows of Hope ; I will chase you no more, I will 



190 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* believe you no more. And ye too, haggard spectres 

* of Fear, I care not for you; ye too are ail shadows 

* and a lie. Let me rest here : for I am way-weary 

* and life-weary ; 1 will rest here, were it but to die : 
' to die or to live is alike to me; alike insignificant.' 
— And again : * Here, then, as I lay in that Centre 

* OF Indifference ; cast, doubtless, by benignant upper 

* Influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy dreams rolled 
' gradually away, and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new 
' Earth. The first preliminary moral Act, Annihilation 
' oi^ Se]( (Sebsi-tddtung), had been happily accomplished ; 
' and my mind's eyes were now unsealed, and its hands 

* ungyved.' 

Might we not also conjecture that the following pas- 
sage refers to his Locality, during this same ' healing 
sleep ; * that his Pilgrim-stafF lies cast aside here, on 

* the high table-land ; ' and indeed that the repose is 
already taking wholesome effect on him ? If it were 
not that the tone, in some parts, has more of riancy, 
even of levity, than we could have expected ! However, 
in Teufelsdrockh, there is always the strangest Dualism : 
light dancing with guitar-music, will be going on in the 
fore-court, while by fits from within comes the faint 
whimpering of woe and wail. We transcribe the piece 
entire : 

* Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey Tent, 

* musing and meditating ; on the high table-land, in front 

* of the Mountains ; over me, as roof, the azure Dome, 

* and around me, for walls, four azure flowing curtains, 

* — namely, of the Four azure Winds, on whose bottom- 

* fringes also I have seen gilding. And then to fancy 

* the fair Castles that stood sheltered in these Mountain 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 191 

hollows ; with then* green flower lawns, and white dames 
and damosels, lovely enough : or better still, the straw- 
roofed Cottages, wherein stood many a Mother baking 
bread, with her children round her :-— all hidden and 
protectingly folded up in the valley-folds ; yet there and 
alive, as sure as if I beheld them. Or to see, as well as 
fancy, the nine Towns and Villages, that lay round my 
mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were wont to 
speak to me (by their steeple-bells) with metal tongue; 
and, in almost all weather, proclaimed their vitality by 
repeated Smoke-clouds ; whereon, as on a culinary 
horologe, I might read the hour of the day. For it was 
the smoke of cookery, as kind housewives, at morning, 
midday, eventide, were boiling their husbands' kettles j 
and ever a blue pillar rose up into the air, successively 
or simultaneously, from each of the nine, saying, as 
plainly as smoke could say : Such and such a meal is 
getting ready here. Not uninteresting ! For you have 
the whole Borough, with all its love-makings and 
scandal-mongeries, contentions and contentments, as in 
miniature, and could cover it all with your hat. — If, in 
my wide Wayfarings, I had learned to look into the 
business of the World in its details, here perhaps was 
the place for combining it into general propositions, 
and deducing inferences therefrom. 

' Often also could J see the black Tempest marching 
in anger through the Distance : round some Schreck- 
horn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying vapour 
gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down 
like a mad witch's hair ; till, after a space, it vanished, 
and in the clear sunbeam, your Schreckhorn stood 
smiling grim-white, for the vapour had held snow. 



1^*2 SAkTOR IRESARTUS. 

How thou fermeniest and elaboratest, in thy great 
fermenting-vat and laboratory of an Atmosphere, of a 
World, O Nature !— Or what is Nature? Ha ! why do 
I not name thee God ? Art thou not the " Living Gar- 
ment of God ?" O Heavens, is it, in very deed, He then 
that ever speaks through thee ; that lives and loves in 
thee, that lives and loves in me ? 

* Foreshadows, call them rather fore-splendours, of 
that Truth, and Beginning of Truths, fell mysteriously 
over my soul. Sweeter than Dayspring to the Ship- 
wrecked in Nova Zembla ; ah! like the mother's voice 
to her little child that strays bewildered, weeping, in 
unknown tumults ; like soft streamings of celestial 
music to my too exasperated heart, came that Evangel. 
The Universe is not dead and demoniacal, a charnel- 
house with spectres ; but godlike, and my Father's ! 

' With other eyes too could I now look upon my 
fellow man ; with an infinite Love, an infinite Pity. 
Poor, wandering, wayward man! Art thou not tried, 
and beaten with stripes, even as I am ? Ever, whether 
thou bear the Royal mantle or the Beggar's gabardine, 
art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden ; and thy Bed 
of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, my Brother ! 
why cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe 
away all tears from thy eyes. — Truly, the din of many- 
voiced Life, which, in this solitude, with the mind's 
organ, I could hear, was no longer a maddening dis- 
cord, but a melting one : like inarticulate cries, and 
sobbings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of 
Heaven are prayers. The poor Earth, with her poor 
joys, was now my needy Mother, not my cruel Step- 
dame ; Man, with his so mad Wants and so mean 



THE EVERLASTINii YEA. 193 

/ Endeavours, had become the dearer to me^ asd even 

* for his sufferings and his sins, I now first named him 

* Brother. Thus was I standing in the porch of that 

* " Sanctuary of Sorrow-; " by strarige, steep ways, had 
' I too been guided thither; and ere long its «acred 

* gates wouW open, and the ^^ Divine Depth of Sorrow" 
' lie disclosed to rae.' 

The Professor says, h« here first got eye on the Knot 
that had been strangling him, and straightway could 
unfasten it, and was free. ' A vain interminable con- 
' troversy,' writes he, * touching what is at present called 
' Origin of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every 

* soul, since the beginning of the world ; and in every 

* soul, that would pass from idle Suffering into actual 

* Endeavouring, must first be put an end to. The most, 

* in our time, have to go content w^th a simple, incorn- 

* plete enough Suppression of this controversy ; to a few 
^ some Solution of it is indispensable. In every new era, 

* too, such Solution comes out in different terras; and 
' ever the Solution of the last era has become obsolete, 
' and is found unserviceable. For it is man's nature to 

* change his Dialect from century to century ; he cannot 

* help it though he would. The authentic Church-Cate- 
^ cJiism of our present century has not yet fallen into 

* my hands : meanwhile, for my own private behoof, I 
' attempt to elucidate the matter so. /Man's Unhappi- 
^ ness, as I construe, comes of his Greatness ; it is be- 

* cause there is an Infinite in him, which with all his 

* cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite* Will 

* the whole Finance Ministers and Upholsterers and 

* Confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in joint- 

* stock company, to make one Shoeblack happy ? They 

18 



194 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* cannot accomplish it, above an hour or two j for the 

* Shoeblack also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach; 

* and would require, if you consider it, for his permanent 

* satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no 

* more, and no less : God^s infinite Universe altogether 

* to himself, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every 

* wish as fast as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer, a 
' Throat like that of Ophiuchus ; speak not of them ; to 

* the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner 

* is your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it mi^ht 

* have been of better vintage. Try him with half of a 

* Universe, of an Omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling 

* with the proprietor of the other half, and declares him- 
' self the most maltreated of men. — rAlways there is a 
' black spot in our sunshine ; it is even, as 1 said, the 

* Shadow of Ourselves^ 

* But the whim we have of Happiness is somewhat 
' thus. By certain valuations, and averages, of our own 

* striking, we come upon some sort of average terrestrial 

* lot ; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, and of inde- 

* feasible right. It is simple payment of our wages, 

* of our deserts : requires neither thanks nor complaint : 

* only such overplus as there may be do we account 

* Ha])piness ; any deficit again is Misery. Now consider 

* that we have the valuation of our own deserts ourselves, 

* and what a fund of Self-conceit there is in each of us, 

* — do you wonder that the balance should so often dip 

* the wrong way, and many a Blockhead cry : See there, 

* what a payment; was ever worthy gentleman so used ! 
* — I tell thee, Blockhead, it all comes of thy Vanity; 

* of what ihoM fanciest those same deserts of thine to be. 

* Fancy that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 195 

* likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only shot: 

* fancy that thou deservest to be hanged in a hair-halter, 

* it^will be a luxury to die in hemp. 

f So true is it, what I then said, that the Fraction of 
' Life can. be increased in value not so much hy in- 

* creasing your Numerator as hy lessening your De- 
' nominator. I Nay, unless my Algebra deceive me, 

* Unify itself divided by Zero will give Infinity. Make 

* thy claim of wages a zero, then ; thou hast the world 

* under thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our time write : 

* " It is only with Renunciation {Entsagen) that Life, 
properly speaking, can be said to begin." 

* I asked myself : What is this that, ever since earliest 
' years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and lament- 

* ing and seif-tormenting, on account of? Say it in a 

* word : is it not because thou art not happy 1 Because 
' the Thou (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently ho- 
' noured, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared for ? 

* Foolish soul ! What Act of Legislature was there that 

* thou shouldst be Happy 1 A little while ago thou 

* hadst no right to be at all. What if thou wert born 

* and predestined not to be Happy, but to be Unhappy ! 
^ Art thou nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest 
' through the Universe seeking after somewhat to eat; 
' and shrieking dolefully because carrion enough is not 
^ given thee ? Close thy Byron ; open thy Goethe.' 

' Es leuchtet mir ein, I see a glimpse of it ! ' cries he 
elsewhere : * there is in man a Higher than Love of 

* Happiness :- he can do without Happiness, and instead 
^ thereof find Blessedness! Was it not to preach forth 
' this same Higher that sages and martyrs, the Poet 

* and the Priest, in all times, have spoken and suffered ; 



196 SARTOR KESARTUSV 

* bearing testimony, through life and through death, of 
' the Godlike that is in Man, and how in the Godlike 
'only has he Strength and Freedom '^ Which God- 

* inspired Doctrine art thou too hoiiioured to be taught ; 
' O Heavens 1 and broken with manifold merciful Afflic- 

* tions, even till thou become contrite,, and learn it \ O 

* thank thy Destiny for these ; thankfully bear what yet 
' remain : thou hadst need of them ; t;he Self in thee 

* needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-pa- 
' roxysms is Life rooting out the deep-seated chronic 

* Disease, and triumphs over Death. On the roaring 
' billows of Time, thou art not engulphed, but borne 

* aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love not Pleasure ; 

* love God. This is the Everlasting Yea, wherein 
'all contradiction is solved ; wherein whoso walks and 

* works, it is well with him.' 

And again : ' Small is it that thou canst trample the 
' Earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek 

* Zeno trained thee : thou canst love the Earth while it 

* injures thee, and even because it injures thee ; for this 
' a Greater than Zeno was needed, and he too was sent. 

* Knowest thou that " Warship of Soi^ow 1 " The 
' Temple thereof, opened some eighteen centuries ago, 

* now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the habitation 

* of doleful creatures : nevertheless, venture forward ; 

* in a low crypt, arched out of falling fragments, thou 

* findest the Altar still there, and its sacred Lamp peren- 

* nially burning,' 

Without pretending to comment on which strange 
utterances, the Editor will only remark that there lies 
beside them, much of a still more questionable character ; 
unsuited to the general apprehension ; nay wherein, he 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 197 

liimself does not see his way. Nebulous disquisitions on 
Religion, yet not without bursts of splendour; on the 
* perennial continuance of Inspiration ; ' on Prophecy ; 
that there are * true Priests, as well as Baal-Priests, in 
our own day : ' with more of the like sort. We select 
some fractions, by way of finish to this farrago. 

' Cease, my moch-respected Herr von Voltaire,' thus 
apostrophises the Professor : * shut thy sweet voice ; for 
the task appointed thee seems finished. Sufficiently 
hast thou demonstrated this proposition, considerable 
or otherwise : That the Mythus of the Christian Reli- 
gion looks not in the eighteenth century as it did in 
the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty quartos, and 
the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos and folios, 
and flying sheets or reams, printed before and since on 
the same subject, all needed to convince us of so little ! 
But what next ? Wilt thou help us to embody the 
divine Spirit of that Religion in a new Mythus, in a 
new vehicle and vesture, that our Souls, otherwise too 
like perishing, may live? What ! thou hast no faculty 
in that kind 1 Only a torch for burning, no hammer 

for building? Take our thanks, then, and thyself 

away. • 

'Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me? 
Or is the God present, felt in my own Heart a thing 
which Herr von Voltaire will dispute out of me ; or 
dispute into me? To the " Worship of Sorrow" 
ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, has not 
that Worship originated, and been generated ; is it not 
here ? Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether it 
is of God ! This is Belief; all else is Opinion, — for 
which latter whoso will let him worry and be worried.' 
18* 



198 SARTOR RESARTETbV 

* Neither/ observes be elsewhere, ' shall ye tear out 

* one another's eyes, struggling over " Plenary Inspira- 
tion," and such like : try rather to get a little even 

* Partial Inspiration, each of you for himself. One 

* Bible t know, of whose Plenary Inspiration doubt is 

* not so much as possible ; nay with, my own eyes I saw 

* the God's-Hand writing it : thereof all other Bibles are 

* but Leaves,, — say,^ in Picture- Writing to assist the 

* weaker faculty.' 

Or to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to 
an end, Jet him take the following perhaps more intel- 
ligible passage : 

' To me, in this our Life,' says the Professor, * which 
' is an internecine warfare with the Time-spirit, other 

* warfare seems questionable. Hast thou in any way a 

* Contention with thy brother, I advise thee, think well 

* what the meaning thereof is. If thou guage it to the 

* bottom,, it is simply this : " Fellow,, see ! thou art taking 
' more than thy share of Happiness in the world, some- 
' thing from my share : which, by the Heavens, thou 
' shalt not ; nay I will fight thee rather." — Alas ! and 

* the whole lot to be divided is such a beggarly matter, 

* truly a " feast of shells," for tl»e substance has been 

* spilled out : not enough to quench one Appetite ; and 

* the collective human; species clutching at them ! — Can 

* we not, in all such eases,, rather say : " Take it,, thou 
*" too-ravenous individual; take that pitiful additional 
'fraction of a share, which I reckoned mine, but which 

* thou so wantest ; take it with a blessing : would ta 

* Heaven I had enough for thee ! " — If Fichte's Wissen- 

* schaftslehre be "to a certain extent. Applied Chris- 

* tianity," surely to a still greater extent, so is this- 



THE EVERLASTING ¥EA» 199 

* We have here not a Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half 
' Duty, namely the Passive half: could we but do it, as 

* we can demonstrate it ! 

/* But indeed Conviction, were it never so excellent, is . 
/worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay pro- 
' perly Conviction is not possible till then ; inasmuch as 
' all Speculation is by nature endless, formless, a vortex 

* amid vortices : only, by a felt indubitable certainty of 

* Experience, does it find any centre to revolve round, 

* and so fashion itself into a system. Most true is it, as 

* a wise man teaches us, that "Doubt of any sort cannot 
' be removed except by Action." On which ground too 
' let him who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain 

* light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may ripen 

* into day, lay this other precept well to heart, which to 

' me was of invaluable service : " Do the Duty which^ 

* lies nearest tliee^^ which thou k newest to be a Duty ! 
'■Thy second Duty, will already have become clearer. 

* May we not say, however, that the hour of Spiritual 

* Enfranchisement is even this : When your Ideal World, 

* wherein the whole man has been dimly struggling and 

* inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes revealed, 
' and thrown open ; and you discover, with amazement 
' enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm Meister, that 
' your " America is here or nowhere?" The Situation 

/ that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied ; 
"'^ by man. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, 
' despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, 
' here or nowhere is thy Ideal : work it out therefrom ; 

* and working, believe, live, be free.. Fool ! the Ideal 
Ms in thyself, the Impediment too is in thyself: thy 
' Condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that samj& 



200 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Ideal out of: what matters whether such stuff be of 
this sort or of that, so the Form thou give it be heroic, 
be poetic ? O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of 
the Actual, and criest bitterly to the gods for a king- 
dom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth : 
the thing thou seekest is already with thee, " here or 
nowhere," couldst thou only see I 

* But it is with man's Soul as it was. with Nature : the 
beginning of Creation is — Light. Till the eye have 
vision, the whole members are in bonds. Divine mo- 
ment, when over the tempest-tost Soul, as once over 
the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken : Let there be 
Light ! Ever to the greatest that has felt such mo- 
ment, is it not miraculous and God-announcing ; even 
as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and least? 
The mad primeval Discord is hushed ; the rudely- 
jumbled conflicting elements bind themselves into 
separate Firmaments: deep silent rock-foundations are 
built beneath ; and the skyey vault with its everlasting 
Luminaries above r instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, 
we have a blooming, fertile, Heaven-encompassed 
World. 

' I too could now say to myself: Be no longer a 
Chaos, but a World, or even Worldkin. Produce ! 
Produce ! Were it but the pitifullest infinitesimal 
fraction of a Product, produce it in God's name ! 'Tis 
the utmost thou hast in thee ; out with it then. Up, 
up ! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with 
thy whole might. Work while it is called To-day, for 
the Night coraeth wherein no man can work/ 



PAUSE. 201 



CHAPTER X. 

PAUSE. 

Thus have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily as, 
in such circumstances, might be, followed Teufelsdrockh 
through the various successive states and stages of 
Growth, Entanglement, Unbelief, and almost Repro- 
bation, into a certain clearer state of what he himself 
seems to consider as Conversion. * Blame not the word/ 
says he ; ' rejoice rather that such a word, signifying 
' such a thing,, has come to light in our Modern Era, 
' though hidden from the wisest Ancients. The Old 
' World knew nothing of Conversion : instead of an 

* Ecce Homo, they had only some Choice of Hercules, 
' It was a new-attained progress in the Moral Develop- 

* ment of man : hereby has the Highest come home to 
' the bosoms of the most Limited ; what to Plato was 
' but a hallucination, and to Socrates a chimera, is now 
' clear and certain to your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, 

* and the poorest of their Pietists and Methodists.' 

It is here then that the spiritual majority of Teuf- 
elsdrockh commences : we are henceforth to see him 

* Work in Welldoing,' with the spirit and clear aims of 
a Man. He has discovered that the Ideal Workshop he 
so panted for, is even this same Actual ill-furnished 
Workshop he has so long been stumbling in. He can 
say to himself: ' Tools? Thou hast no Tools? Why, 



202 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* there is not a Man, or a Thing, now alive but has Tools. 

* The basest of created animalcules, the Spider itself, 
' has a spinning-jenny, and warping-mill, and power- 

* loom, within its head ; the stupidest of Oysters has a 

* Papin's-Digester, with stone-and-lime house to hold it 

* in : every being that can live can do something ; this 

* let him do. — Tools ? Hast thou not a Brain, fur- 

* nished, furnishable with some glimmerings of Light ; 

* and three fingers to hold a Pen withal? Never since 

* Aaron's Rod went out of practice, or even before it, 

* was there such a wonder-working Tool : greater than 

* all recorded miracles have been performed by Pens. 

* For strangely in this so solid-seeming World, which 

* nevertheless is in continual restless flux, it is appointed 
' that Soundy to appearance the most fleeting, should be 
' the most continuing of all things. The Word is well 

* said to be omnipotent in this world ; man, thereby 

* divine, can create as by a Fiat. Awake, arise ! Speak 

* forth what is in thee ; what God has given thee, what 

* the Devil shall not take away. Higher task than that 

* of Priesthood was allotted to no man : wert thou but 

* the meanest in that sacred Hierarchy, is it not honour^ 

* enough therein to spend and be spent ? 

' By this Art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously 
' degrade into a handicraft,* adds Teufelsdrockh, ' have 
' I thenceforth abidden. Writings of mine, not indeed 

* known as mine (for what am /?), have fallen, per- 

* haps not altogether void, into the mighty seedfield of 
' Opinion ; fruits of my unseen sowing gratifyingly meet 

* me here and there. I thank the Heavens that I have 

* now found my Calling ; wherein, with or without per- 

* ceptible result, I am minded diligently to persevere. 



PAUSE. 203 

* Nay how knowest thou,' cries he, * but this and the 

* other pregnant Device, now grown to be a world- 
' renowned far-working Institution ; like a grain of 

* right mustard-seed once cast into the right soil, and 
' now stretching out strong boughs to the four winds, for 

* the birds of the air to lodge in, — may have been 

* properly my doing ? Some one's doing it without 
' doubt was ; from some Idea, in some single Head, it did 
' first of all take beginning : why not from some Idea in 

* mine ?' Does Teufelsdrockh here glance at that ** So- 
ciety FOR THE Conservation of Property [Eigen- 
thumS'Conservirende Gesellschaft)," of which so many 
ambiguous notices glide spectre-like through these inex- 
pressible Paperbags 1 ' An Institution,' hints he, ' not 
' unsuitable to the wants of the time ; as indeed such 

* sudden extension proves : for already can the Society 
' number, among its office-bearers or corresponding 

* members, the highest Names, if not the highest Per- 

* sons, in Germany, England, France ; and contributions, 
' both of money and of meditation, pour in from all 
' quarters; to, if possible, enlist the remaining Integrity 

* of the world, and, defensively and with forethought, 

* marshal it round this Palladium.' Does Teufelsdrockh 

* mean, then, to give himself out as the originator of that 
so notable Eigenthums-conservirende (' Owndom-con- 
serving') Gesellschaft ; and, if so, what, in the Devil's 
name, is it? He again hints: 'At a time when the 

* divine Commandment, Thou shall not steal, wherein 

* truly, if well understood, is comprised the whole Hebrew 

* Decalogue, with Solon's and Lycurgus's Constitutions, 

* Justinian's Pandects, the Code Napoleon, and all 

* Codes, Catechisms, Divinities, Moralities whatsoever, 



204 SAHTOR HESARTUS. 

that man has hitherto devised (and enforced with 
Altar-fire and Gallows-ropes) for his social guidance : 
at a time, I say, when this divine Commandment has 
all but faded away from the general remembrance ; 
and, with little disguise, a new opposite Commandment, 
Thou shah steal, is everywhere promulgated, — it per- 
haps behoved, in this universal dotage and deliration, 
the sound portion of mankind to bestir themselves and 
rally. When the widest and wildest violations of that 
divine right of Property, the only divine right now ex- 
tant or conceivable, are sanctioned and recommended 
by a vicious Press, and the world has lived to hear it 
asserted that ice have no Property in our very Bodies, 
hut only an accidental Possession, and Liferent, what 
is the issue to be looked for 1 Hangmen and Catch- 
poles may, by their noose-gins and baited fall-traps, 
keep down the smaller sort of vermin : but what, ex- 
cept perhaps some such Universal Association, can 
protect us against whole meat-devouring and man- 
devouring hosts of Boa Constrictors 1 If, therefore, the 
more sequestered Thinker have wondered, in his pri- 
vacy, from what hand that perhaps not ill-written 
Program in the Public Journals, with its high Prize- 
(Questions and so liberal Prizes, could have proceeded, 
— let him now cease such wonder ; and, with undivided 
faculty, betake himself to the Concurrenz (Compe- 
tition).' 
We ask : Has this same * perhaps not ill-written 
Program,^ or any other authentic Transaction of that 
Property-conserving Society, fallen under the eye of the 
British Reader, in any Journal, foreign or domestic? If 
so, what are those Prize-Questions ; what are the terms 



IPAUSE. 



205 



©f Gompetition, and when and where ? No printed 
Newspaper leaf, no farther light of any sort, to be met 
with in these Paperbags ! Or is the whole business one 
other of those whimsicalities, and perverse inexplica- 
bilities, whereby Herr Teufelsdrockh, meaning much or 
nothing, is pleased so often to play fast and loose 
with us 2 

Here, indeed, at length, must the Editor give utterance 
to a painful suspicion, which, through late Chapters, has 
begun to haunt him ; paralysing any little enthusiasm, 
that might still have rendered his thorny Biographical 
task a labour of love. It is a suspicion grounded perhaps 
on trifles, yet confirmed almost into certainty by the 
more and more discernible humouristico-satirical ten- 
dency of Teufelsdrockh, in whom underground humours, 
and intricate sardonic rogueries, wheel within wheel, 
defy all reckoning : a suspicion, in one word, that these 
Auto-biographical Documents are partly a Mystification ! 
What if many a so-called Fact were little better than a 
Fiction ; if here we had no direct Camera-obscura Picture 
of the Professor's History ; but only some more or less 
fantastic Adumbration, symbolically, perhaps significantly 
enough, shadowing forth the same i Our theory begins 
to be that, in receiving as literally authentic what was 
but hieroglyphically so, Hofrath Heuschrecke, whom in 
that case we scruple not to name Hofrath Nose-of-Wax, 
was made a fool of, and set adrift to make fools of others. 
Gould it be expected, indeed, that a man so known for 
impenetrable reticence as Teufelsdrockh, would all at 
once frankly unlock his private citadel to an English 
Editor and a German Hofrath ; and not rather de- 
19 



206 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

ceptively inlock both Editor and Hofrath, in the ia- 
byrinthic tortuosities and covered ways of said citadel 
(having enticed them thither), to see, in his half-devilish 
way, how the fools would look ? 

Of one fool, however, the Herr Professor will perhaps 
find himself short. On a small slip, formerly thrown 
aside as blank, the ink being all but invisible, we 
lately notice, and with effort decipher, the following : 
^^What are your historical Facts; still more your bio- 
' graphical? Wilt thou know a Man, above all, a Man- 

* kind, by stringing together beadrolls of what thou 

* namest Facts? The man is the spirit he worked in ; 
' not what he did, but what he became. Facts are en- 

* graved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the key. 

* And then how your Blockhead {Dummkopf) studies 

* not their Meaning ; but simply whether they are well 

* or ill cut, what he calls Moral or Immoral ! Still worse 

* is it with your Bungler {Pfuscher) : such I have seen 

* reading some Rousseau, with pretences of interpreta- 

* tion ; and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity for 

* a common poisonous Reptile.' I Was the Professor ap- 
prehensive lest an Editor, selected as the present boasts 
himself, might mistake the Teufelsdrockh Serpent-of- 
Eternity in like manner ? For which reason it was to 
be altered, not without underhand satire, into a plainer 
Symbol ? Or is this merely one of his half-sophisms, 
half-truisms, which if he can but set on the back of a 
Figure, he cares not whither it gallop ? We say not 
with certainty ; and indeed, so strange is the Professor, 
can never say. If our Suspicion be wholly unfounded, 
let his own questionable ways, notour necessary circum- 
spectness, bear the blame. 



PAUSE. 



207 



But be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated and 
indeed exhausted Editor determines here to shut these 
Paper bags, for the present. Let it suffice that we know 
of Teufelsdrockh, so far, if, * not what he did, yet what 
he became: ' tlie rather, as his character has now taken 
its ultimate bent, and no new revolution, of importance, 
is to be looked for. The imprisoned Chrysalis is now a 
winged Psyche; and such, wheresoever be its flight, it 
will continue. To trace by what complex gyrations 
{flights or involuntary waftings) through the mere ex- 
ternal Life-element, Teufelsdrockh reaches his University 
Professorship, and the Psyche clothes herself in civic 
Titles, without altering her now fixed nature, — would be 
comparatively an unproductive task ; were we even un- 
suspicious of its being, for us at least, a false and impos- 
sible one. His outward Biography, therefore, which, at 
the Blumine Lover's-Leap, we saw churned utterly into 
spray-vapour, may hover in that condition, for aught 
that concerns us here. Enough that by survey of certain 
' pools and plashes,' we have ascertained its general 
<3irection : do we not already know that, by one way and 
other, it has long since rained dovi^n again into a stream ; 
mid even now, at Weissnichtwo, flows deep and still, 
fraught with the Philosophy/ of Clothes, and visible to 
whoso will cast eye thereon ? Over much invaluable 
matter that lies scattered, like jewek among quarry- 
rubbish, in those Paper-catacombs, we may have occasion 
to glance back, and somewhat will demand insertion at 
the right place : meanwhile be our toilsome diggings 
therein suspended. 

If now, before reopening the great Clothes- Volume j 
we ask what our degree of progress, during these Ten 



208 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Chapters, has been, towards right understanding of the 
Clothes- P hilo s oj)]iy y let not our discouragement become 
total. To speak in that old figure of the Hell-gate 
Bridge over Chaos, a ^e\v flying pontoons have perhaps 
been added, though as yet they drift straggling on the 
Flood ; how far they will reach, when once the chains 
are straightened and fastened, can, at present, only be 
matter of conjecture. 

So much we already calculate. Through many a little 
loophole, we have had glimpses into the internal world 
of Teufelsdrockh r his strange mystic, almost magic 
Diagram of the Universe, and how it was gradually 
drawn, is not henceforth altogether dark to us. Those 
mysterious ideas on Time, which merit consideration, 
and are not wholly unintelligible with such, may by and 
by prove significant. Still more may hfs somewhat 
peculiar view of Nature ; the decisive Oneness he as- 
cribes to Nature. How all Nature and Life are but one 
Garment^ a ' Living Garment,' woven and ever a-weaving 
in the ' Loom of Time :^' is not here, indeed, the outline 
of a whole Clothes- Philosophy ; at least the arena it is 
to work in 1 Remark too that the Character of the man, 
nowise without meaning in such a matter, becomes less 
enigmatic i amid so much tumultuous obscurity, almost 
like diluted madness, do not a certain indomitable Defiance 
and yet a boundless Reverence seem to loom forth as the 
two mountain summits, on whose rock-strata ail the rest 
were based and built 1 

Nay, further, may we not say that Teufelsdrockh's 
Biography, allowing it even, as suspected, only a hiero- 
glyphical truth, exhibits a man, as it were preappointed 
for Clothes-Philosophy I To look through the Shows 



PAtlSE, 209 

^f things into Things themselves he is led and compelled. 
The ' Passivity ' given him by birth is fostered by all 
turns of his fortune. Everywhere cast out, like oil out 
of water, from mingling in any Employment, in any 
public Communion, he has no portion but Solitude, and 
a life of Meditation, The whole energy of his existence 
is directed, through long years, on one task : that of en- 
during pain, if he cannot cure it. Thus everywhere do 
the Shows of things oppress him, withstand him, threaten 
him with fearfullest destruction : only by victoriously 
penetrating into Things themselves can he find peace 
and a stronghold. But is not this same looking through 
the Shows or Vestures into the Things even the first 
preliminary to a Philosophy of Clothes? Do we not, in 
all this, discern some beckonings towards the true higher 
purport of such a Philosophy; and what shape it must 
assume with such a man, in such an era 1 

Perhaps in entering on Book Third, the courteous 
Reader is not utterly without guess whither he is bound : 
nor, let us hope, for all the fantastic Dream-Grottoes 
through which, as is our lot with Teufelsdrockh, he 
must wander, will there be wanting between whiles some 
twinkling of a steady Polar Star, 



19* 



{ 210 ) 



BOOK III, 



CHAPTER I. 

TNCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. 

As a wonder-loving^ and wonder-seeking man, Teufefs- 
drockh, from an early part of this Clothes-Volume, has 
more and more exhibited himself. Striking it was, amid 
all his perverse cloudiness, with what force of vision and 
of heart he pierced into the mystery of the World ; re- 
cognising in the highest sensible phenomena, so far as 
Sense w~ent, only fresh or faded Raiment ; yet ever, 
under this, a celestial Essence thereby rendered visible : 
and while, on the one hand, he trod the old rags of 
Matter, with their tinsels, into the mire, he on the other 
everywhere exalted Spirit above all earthly principalities 
and powers, and worshipped it, though under the meanest 
shapes, with a true Platonic Mysticism. What the man 
ultimately purposed by thus casting his Greek-fire inta 
the general Wardrobe of the Universe; what such, more 
or less complete, rending and burning of Garments 
throughout the whole compass of Civilised Life and 
Speculation, should lead to ; the rather as he was no 
Adamite, in any sense, and could not, like Rousseau, re- 
commend either bodily or intellectual Nudity, and a 



INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. 211 

return to the savage state ; all this our readers are now 
bent to discover ; this is, in fact, properly the gist and 
purport of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Philosophy of 
Clothes. 

Be it remembered, however, that such purport is here 
not so much evolved as detected to lie ready for evolving. 
We are to guide our British Friends into the new Gold- 
country, and shew them the mines; nowise to dig out 
and exhaust its wealth, which indeed remains for all 
time inexhaustible. Once there, let each dig for his 
own behoof, and enrich himself. 

Neither, in so capricious inexpressible a Work as this 
of the Professor's, can our course now more than for- 
merly be straightforward, step by step, but at best leap 
by leap. Significant Indications stand out here and 
there ; which for the critical eye, that looks both widely 
and narrowly, shape themselves into some ground-scheme 
of a Whole : to select these with judgment, so that a 
leap from one to the other be possible, and (in our old 
figure) by chaining them together, a passable Bridge be 
eflfected : this as heretofore continues our only method. 
Among such light-spots, the following, floating in much 
wild matter ^ho\xi P erf ectihility ^ has seemed worth clutch- 
ing at : 

* Perhaps the most remarkable incident in Modern 

* History,' says Teufelsdrockh, ' is not the Diet of 
' Worms, still less the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, 
' Peterloo, or any other Battle ; but an incident passed 

* carelessly over by most Historians, and treated with 

* some degree of ridicule by others : namely, George 

* Fox's making to himself a Suit of Leather. This man, 

* the first of the Quakers, and by trade a Shoemaker, 



212 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* was one of those, to whom, under ruder or purer form, 

* the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest 

* itself; and, across all the hulls of Ignorance and earthly 

* Degradation, shine through, in unspeakable Awfulness, 

* unspeakable Beauty, on their souls : who therefore are 

* rightly accounted Prophets, God-possessed ; or even 

* Gods, as in some periods it has chanced. Sitting in his 

* stall ; working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste- 

* horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of 

* rubbish, this youth had nevertheless a Living Spirit 

* belonging to him ; also an antique Inspired Volume, 
' through which, as through a window, it could look 
' upwards, and discern its celestial Home. The task of a 

* daily pair of shoes, coupled even with some prospect 

* of victuals, and an honourable Mastership in Cord- 

* wainery, and perhaps the post of Thirdborough in his 

* Hundred, as the crown of long faithful sewing, — was 

* nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind : but ever 

* amid the boring and hammering came tones from that 

* far country, came Splendours and Terrors ; for this 

* poor Cordwainer, as we said, was a Man ; and the 

* Temple of Immensity, wherein as Man he had been 
' gent to minister, was full of holy mystery to him. 

* The Clergy of the neighbourhood, the ordained 

* Watchers and Interpreters of that same holy mystery, 

* listened with unaffected tedium to his consultations, 

* and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to 

* ** drink beer, and dance with the girls." Blind leaders 

* of the blind! For what end were their tithes levied 

* and eaten ; for what were their shovel-hats scooped out, 

* and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt on ; and 

* such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and organing, 



INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. 213 

' and other racketting, held over that spot of God's 

* Earth, — if Man were but a Patent Digester, and the 
' Belly with its adjuncts the grand Reality 1 Fox turned 
' from them, with tears and a sacred scorn, back to his 
' Leather-parings and his Bible. Mountains of encum- 

* brance, higher than ^tna, had been heaped over that 
' Spirit : but it was a Spirit, and would not lie buried 
' there. Through long days and nights of silent agony, 
' it struggled and wrestled, with a man's force, to be 
' free : how its prison-mountains heaved and swayed 
' tumultuously, as the giant spirit shook them to this 
' hand and that, and emerged into the light of Heaven ! 

* That Leicester shoe-shop, had men known it, was a 
' holier place than any Vatican or Loretto-shrine. — " So 

* bandaged, and hampered, and hemmed in," groaned 

* he, " with thousand requisitions, obligations, straps, 

* tatters, and tagrags, I can neither see nor move : not 
' my own am I, but the World's ; and Time flies fast, 
' and Heaven is high, and Hell is deep : Man ! bethink 
' thee, if thou hast power of Thought ! Why not ; 
' what binds me here? Want! Want! — Ha, of what? 

* Will all the shoe-wages under the Moon ferry me across 

* into that far Land of Light ? Only Meditation can, 

* and devout Prayer to God. Twill to the woods : the 

* hollow of a tree will lodge me, wild berries feed me ; 
' and for Clothes, cannot I stitch myself one perennial 
' Suit of Leather ! " 

' Historical Oil-painting,' continues Teufelsdrockh, 

* is one of the Arts I never practised ; therefore shall I 

* not decide whether this subject were easy of execution 

* on the canvass. Yet often has it seemed to me as if 

* such first outflashing of man's Freewill, to lighten j more 



214 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

and more into Day, the Chaotic Night that threatened 
to engulf him in its hindrances and its horrors, were 
properly the only grandeur there is in History. Let 
some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and under- 
standing heart, picture George Fox on that morning, 
when he spreads out his cutting-board for the last time, 
and cuts cow-hides by unwonted patterns, and stitches 
them together into one continuous all-including Case, 
the farewell service of his awl ! Stitch away, thou noble 
Fox : every prick of that little instrument is pricking 
into the heart of Slavery, and World-worship, and the 
Mammon-god. Thy elbows jerk, as in strong swimmer- 
strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the 
Prison-ditch, within which Vanity holds her Work- 
house and Rag-fair, into lands of true Liberty ; were 
the work done, there is in broad Europe one Free Man, 
and thou art he ! 

* Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the 
loftiest height : and for the Poor also a Gospel has been 
published. Surely, if, as D'Alembert asserts, my illus- 
trious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest man of 
Antiquity, only that he wanted Decency, then by 
stronger reason is George Fox the greatest of the Mo- 
derns ; and greater than Diogenes himself: for he too 
stands on the adamantine basis of his Manhood, casting 
aside all props and shoars ; yet not, in half-savage 
Pride, undervaluing the Earth ; valuing it rather, as a 
place to yield him warmth and food, he looks Heaven- 
ward from his Earth, and dwells in an element of 
Mercy and Worship, with a still Strength, such as the 
Cynic's Tub did nowise witness. Great, truly, was that 
Tub; a temple from which man's dignity and divinity 



INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. 215 

* was scornfully preached abroad : but greater is the 
' Leather Hull, for the same sermon was preached there, 

• and not in Scorn but in Love.' 

George Fox's ' perennial suit,' with all that it held, 
has been worn quite into ashes for nigh two centuries : 
why, in a discussion on the Perfectihility of Society, 
reproduce it now ? Not out of blind sectarian partisan- 
ship : Teufelsdrockh himself is no Quaker ; with all his 
pacific tendencies, did we not see him, in that scene at 
the North Cape, with the Archangel Smuggler, exhibit 
fire-arms? 

For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is more 
meant in this passage than meets the ear. At the same 
time, who can avoid smiling at the earnestness and Boe- 
otian simplicity (if indeed there be not an underhand 
satire in it), with which that * Incident' is here brought 
forward ; and, in the Professor's ambiguous way, as 
clearly perhaps as he durst in Weissnichtwo, recom- 
mended to imitation! Does Teufelsdrockh anticipate 
that, in this age of refinement, any considerable class of 
the community, by way of testifying against the ' Mam- 
mon-god,' and .escaping from what he calls ' Vanity's 
Workhouse and Ragfair,' where doubtless some of them 
are toiled and whipped and hoodwinked sufficiently, — 
will sheathe themselves in close-fitting cases of Leather ? 
The idea is ridiculous in the extreme. Will Majesty lay 
aside its robes of state, and Beauty its frills and train- 
gowns, for a second skin of tanned hide 1 By which 
change Huddersfield and Manchester, and Coventry and 
Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar, were reduced to hungry 
solitudes ; and only Day and Martin could profit. For 



S16 SAJITOR RESARTUS. 

neither would Teufelsdrockh's mad daydream, here as 
we presume covertly intended, of levelling Society [level' 
ling it indeed with a vengeance, into one huge drowned 
marsh !), and so attaining the political effects of Nudity 
without its frigorific or other consequences, — be thereby 
realised. Would not the rich man purchase a waterproof 
suit of Russia Leather ; and the highborn Belle step 
forth in red or azure morocco, lined with shamoy : the 
black cowhide being left to the Drudges and Gibeonites 
of the world ; and so all the old Distinctions re-esta- 
blished ? 

Or has the Professor his own deeper intention ; and 
laughs in his sleeve at oar strictures and glosses, which 
indeed are but a part thereof? 



CHURCH CLOTHES. 



217 



_ CHAPTER II 



CHURCH CLOTHES. 



Not less questionable is his Chapter on Church 
Clothes, which has the farther distinction of being the 
shortest in the Volume. We here translate it entire : 

* By Church Clothes, it need not be premised, that I 

* mean infinitely more than Cassocks and Surplices ; 

* and do not at all mean the mere haberdasher Sunday 

* Clothes that men go to Church in. Far from it ! Church 

* Clothes are, in our vocabulary, the Forms, the Vestures, 
' under which men have at various periods embodied and 

* represented for themselves the Religious Principle ; 
' that is to say, invested the Divine Idea of the World 

* with a sensible and practically active Body, so that it 

* might dwell among them as a living and life-giving 

* Word. 

* These are unspeakably the most important of all the 

* vestures and garnitures of Human Existence. They are 

* first spun and woven, I may say, by that wonder of 

* wonders, Society ; for it is still only when " two or 

* three are gathered together " that Religion, spiritually 

* existent, and indeed indestructible however latent, in 

* each, first outwardly manifests itself (as with " cloven 

* tongues of fire ") and seeks to be embodied in a visible 

* Communion, and Church Militant. Mystical, more 

* than magical, is that Communing of Soul with Soul, 

20 



218 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 



both looking heavenward : here properly Soul first 
speaks with Soul ; for only in looking heavenward, take 
it in what sense you may, not in looking earthward, 
does what we can call Union, mutual Love, Society, 
begin to be possible. How true is that of Novalis : 
** It is certain, my Belief gains quite" infinitely the 
moment I can convince another mind thereof! " Gaze 
thou in the face of thy Brother, in those eyes where 
plays the lambent fire of Kindness, or in those where 
rages the lurid conflagration of Anger ; feel how thy 
own so quiet Soul is straightway involuntarily kindled 
with the like, and ye blaze and reverberate on each 
other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame (of em- 
bracing Love, or of deadly-grappling Hate) ; and then 
say what miraculous virtue goes out of man into man. 
But if so, through all the thick-plied hulls of our 
Earthly Life ; how much more when it is of the 
Divine Life we speak, and inmost Me is, as it were, 
brought into contact with inmost Me ! 

* Thus was it that L said, the Church Clothes are first 
spun and woven by Society ; outward Religion ori- 
ginates by Society, Society becomes possible by Re- 
ligion. Nay, perhaps every conceivable Society, past 
and present, may well be figured as properly and wholly 
a Church, in one or other of these three predicaments: 
an audibly preaching and prophesying Church, which 
is the best ; second, a Church that struggles to preach 
and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its Pentecost 
come ; and third and worst, a Church gone dumb with 
old age, or which, only mumbles delirium prior to 
dissolution. Whosp fancies that by Church is here 
meant Chapterhouses and Cathedrals, or by preaching 



CHURCH CLOTHES. 



219 



* and prophesying, mere speech and chaunting, let him,' 
says the oracular Professor, * read on, light of heart 

* {getrosten Muthes). 

* But with regard to your Church proper, and the 

* Church Clothes specially recognised as Church Clothes, 

* I remark, fearlessly enough, that without such Vestures 

* and sacred Tissues Society has not existed, and will 

* not exist. For if Government is, so to speak, the out- 
' ward SKIN of the Body Politic, holding the whole toge- 

* ther and protecting it ; and all your Craft-Guilds, and 

* Associations for Industry, of hand or of head, are the 

* Fleshly Clothes, the muscular and osseous Tissues 

* (lying under such skin), whereby Society stands and 

* works ; — then is Religion the inmost Pericardial and 

* Nervous Tissue, which ministers Life and warm Circu- 

* lation to the whole. Without which Pericardial Tissue 

* the Bones and Muscles (of Industry) were inert, or 

* animated only by a Galvanic vitality ; the skin would 

* become a shrivelled pelt, or fast-rotting raw-hide ; and 

* Society itself a dead carcass, — deserving to be buried. 

* Men were no longer Social, but Gregarious ; which 
' latter state also could not continue, but must gradually 

* issue in universal selfish discord, hatred, savage isola- 

* tion, and dispersion ; — whereby, as we might continue 

* to say, the very dust and dead body of Society would 

* have evaporated and become abolished. Such, and so 
' all-important, all-sustaining, are the Church Clothes, 

* to civilised or even to rational man. 

* Meanwhile, in our era of the World, those same 
' Church Clothes have gone sorrovyfully out at elbows : 

* nay, far worse, many of them have* become mere hollow 

* Shapes, or Masks, under which no living Figure or 



220 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* Spirit any longer dwells ; but only spiders and un- 
' clean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive their trade; 
' and the Mask still glares on you with its glass-eyes, in 
' ghastly aflfectation of Life, — some generation and half 
' after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, and in un- 
" noticed nooks is weaving for herself new Vestures, 
' wherewith to reappear, and bless us, or our sons or 
' grandsons. As a Priest, or Interpreter of the Holy,, 
' is the noblest and highest of all men, t^o is a Sham- 
' priest [Sckeinpriester) the falsest and basest : neither 
' is it doubtful that his Canonicals, were they Popes^ 
' Tiaras, will one day be torn from him, to make band- 

* ages for the wounds of mankind ; or even to burn into 
' tinder, for general scientific or culinary purposes. 

* All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled 
' in my Second Volume, On the Palingenesia, or Naw- 
' birth of Society ; which volume, as treating practically 
' of the Wear, Destruction, and Re-texture of Spiritual 
' Tissues, or Garments, forms, properly speaking,, the 
' Transcendental or ultimate Portion of this my Work 

* on Clothes, and is already in a state of forwardness.' 

And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or com- 
mentary being added, does Teufelsdrockh, and must his 
Editor now, terminate the singular Chapter on Church 
Clothes 1 



..»> 



SYMBOLS. 



221 



CHAPTER III. 

SYMBOLS. 

Probably it will elucidate the drift of these foregoing 
obscure utterances, if we here insert somewhat of our 
Professor's speculations on Symbols. To state his 
whole doctrine, indeed, were beyond our compass : no- 
where is he more mysterious, impalpable, than in this of 

* Fantasy being the organ of the Godlike ; ' and how 

* Man thereby, though based, to all seeming, on the 

* small Visible, does nevertheless extend down into the 

* infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which Invisible, in- 

* deed, his Life is properly the bodying forth.' Let us, 
omitting these high transcendental aspects of the matter, 
study to glean (whether from the Paperbags or the 
Printed Volume) what little seems logical and practical, 
and cunningly arrange it into such degree of coherence 
as it will assume. By way of proem, take the following 
not injudicious remarks : 

* The benignant efficacies of Concealment,' cries our 
Professor, * who shall speak or sing 1 Silence and 

* Seckecy ! Altars might still be raised to them (were 

* this an altar-building time) for universal worship. 

* Silence is the element in which great things fashion 

* themselves together ; that at length they may emerge, 

* full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, 

* which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William the 

20* 



222 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

' Silent only, but all the considerable men I have known, 
' and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, 
' forebore to babble of what they were creating and pro- 
'jecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do thou 
' thyself but hold thy tongue for one. day : on the mor- 

* row, how much clearer are thy purposes, and duties ; 
' what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen 

* within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were 

* shut x)u,t !, '^ Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman. 
' defined it, the art of concealiag Thought ; but of quite 

* stifling and suspending Thought, so that there is none 
' to conceal. Speech too is great, but not the greatest. 
' As the Swiss Inscription says : Sprechen ist silbern^ 
' Schweigen ist golden (Speech is silvern, Silence i& 

* golden) ; or as I might rather express it i^Speech is of 
'Time, Silence is of Eternity. 

( A * Bees will not work except in darkness; Thought 

/ ' will not work except in Silence : neither will Virtue 

' work except in Secrecy. Let not thy right hand know 

' what thy left hand doeth ! Neither shalt thou prate 

* even to thy own heart of* those secrets known to all." 
' Is not Shame the soil of all Virtue, of all good manners, 

* and good morals'? Like other plants, Virtue will not 
' grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the eye of 
' the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay, do but look at 

* it privily thyself, the root withers, and no flower will 
' glad thee. O my Friends, when we view the fair 
' clustering flowers that over-wreathe, for example, the 

* Marriage-bower, and encircle man's life with the 

* fragrance and hues of Heaven, what band will not 

* smite the foul plunderer that grubs them up by the 
Vroots, and, with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shews 



SYMBOLS. ^23 

* US the dung they flourish in ! Men speak much of 

* the Printing Press with its Newspapers : du Himmel ! 

* what are these to Clothes and the Tailor's Goose ? ' 

* Of kin to the so incalculable influences of Conceal- 

* ment, and connected with still greater things, is the 
' wondrous agency of Symbols. [ In a Symbol there is 
' concealment and yet revelation : here, therefore, by 
' Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a doubled 
'significance.) And if both the Speech be itself high^ 
' and the Silence fit and noble, how expressive will their 
' union be ! Thus in many a painted Device, or simple 
' Seal-emblem, the commonest Truth stands out to us 
' proclaimed with quite new emphasis. 

' For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic wonder- 
' land plays into the small prose domain of Sense, and 

* becomes incorporated therewith. In the Symbol proper, 
' what we can call a Symbol, there is ever, more or less 

* distinctly and directly, some embodyment and revelation 
' of the Infinite ; the Infinite is made to blend itself with 
' the Finite, to stand visible, and as it were, attainable 

* there.' By Symbols, accordingly, is man guided and 
' commanded, made happy, made wretched. He every 

* where finds himself encompassed with Symbols, recog- 

* nised as such or not recognised : the Universe is but 

* one vast Symbol of God ; nay, if thou wilt have it, 
' what is man himself but a Symbol of God ; is not all 
' that he does symbolical ; a revelation to Sense of the 
' mystic god-given Force that is in him ; a " Gospel of 

* Freedom," which he, the " Messias of Nature," 
' preaches, as he can, by act and word? Not a Hut he 

* builds but is the visible embodyment of a Thought; 
' but bears visible record of invisible things ; but is, 



224 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* in the transcendental sense, symbolical as well as 

* real.' 

* Man/ says the Professor elsewhere, in quite antipodal 
contrast with these high-soaring delineations, which we 
have here cut short on the verge of the inane, * man is 
by birth somewhat of an owl. Perhaps too of all the 
owleries that ever possessed him, the most owlish, if 
we consider it, is that of your actually existing Motive- 
Millwrights. Fantastic tricks enough has man played 
in his time; has fancied himself to be most things, 
down even to an animated heap of Glass : but to fancy 
himself a dead Iron-Balance for weighing Pains and 
Pleasures on, was reserved for this his latter era. There 
stands he, his Universe one huge Manger, filled with 
hay and thistles to be weighed against each other; and 
looks long-eared enough. Alas, poor devil 1 spectres 
are appointed to haunt him : one age, he is hagridden, 
bewitched ; the next, priestridden, befooled ; in all 
ages, bedevilled. And now the Genius of Mechanism 
smothers him worse than any Nightmare did ; till the 
Soul is nigh choked out of him, and only a kind of 
Digestive, Mechanic life remains. In Earth and in 
Heaven he can see nothing but Mechanism ; has fear 
for nothing else, hope in nothing else : the world would 
indeed grind him to pieces ; but cannot he fathom the 
Doctrine of Motives, and cunningly compute these, and 
mechanise them to grind the other way ? 

' Were he not, as has been said, purblinded by en- 
chantment, you had but to bid him open his eyes and 
look. In which country, in which time, was it hitherto 
that man's history, or the history of any man, went on 
by calculated or calculable " Motives 1 " What make 



SYMBOLS. 225 

ye of your Christianities, and Chivalries, and Reforma- 
tions, and Marseillese Hymns, and Reigns of Terror ? 
Nay, has not perhaps the Motive-grinder himself been 
in Love 1 Did he never stand so much as a contested 
Election ? Leave him to Time, and the medicating 
virtue of Nature.' 

' Yes, Friends,' elsewhere observes the Professor, ' not 
our Logical, Mensurative faculty, but our Imaginative 
one is King over us ; I might say, Priest and Prophet 
to lead us heavenward ; or Magician and Wizard to 
lead us hell ward. Nay, even for the basest Sensualist, 
what is Sense but the implement of Fantasy ; the vessel 
it drinks out of? Ever in the dullest existence, there 
is a sheen either of Inspiration or of Madness (thou 
partly hast it in thy choice, which of the two) that 
gleams in from the circumambient Eternity, and colours 
with its own hues our little islet of Time. The Under- 
standing is indeed thy window, too clear thou canst 
not make it ; but Fantasy is thy eye, with its colour- 
giving retina, healthy or diseased. Have not I myself 
known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' 
meat, for a piece of glazed cotton, which they called 
their Flag; which, had you sold it at any market- 
cross, would not have brought above three groschen \ 
Did not the whole Hungarian Nation rise, like some 
tumultuous moon-stirred Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph 
pocketed their Iron Crown ; an implement, as was sa^ 
gaciously observed, in size and commercial value, little 
differing from a horse-shoe ? It is in and through 
Symbols that man, consciously or unconsciously, lives, 
works, and has his being : those ages, moreover, are 
accounted the noblest which can the best recognise 



226 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 



symbolical worth, and prize it the highest. For is not 
a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer 
or clearer revelation of the Godlike? 

' Of Symbols, however, I remark farther, that they 
have both an extrinsic and intrinsic value ; oftenest 
the former only. What, for instance, was in that 
clouted Shoe, which the Peasants bore aloft with them 
as ensign in their Baucrnkrieg (Peasants' War) ? Or 
in the Wallet-and-stafF round which the Netherland 
Gueux, glorying in that nickname of Beggars, he- 
roically rallied and prevailed, though against King 
Philip himself 1 Intrinsic significance these had none : 
only extrinsic ; as the accidental Standards of multi- 
tudes more or less sacredly uniting together ; in which 
union itself, as above noted, there is ever something 
mystical and borrowing of the Godlike. Under a like 
category too, stand, or stood, the stupidest heraldic 
Coats-of-arms ; military Banners every where ; and 
generally all national or other sectarian Costumes and 
Customs : they have no intrinsic, necessary divineness, 
or even worth ; but have acquired an extrinsic one. 
^Nevertheless through all these there glimmers some- 
thing of a Divine Idea ; as through military Banners 
themselves, the Divine Idea of Duty, of heroic Daring ; 
in some instances of Freedom, of Right. Nay, the 
highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, 
the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental ex- 
trinsic one. 

* Another matter it is, however, when your Symbol 
has intrinsic meaning, and is of itself ^^ that men 
should unite round it. Let but the Godlike manifest 
itself to Sense ; let but Eternity look, more or less 



SYMBOLS. 



'227 



' visibly, through the Time-Figure [Zeithild) ! Then 
' is it fit that men unite there ; and worship together 
' before such Symbol ; and so from day to day, and 
' from age to age, superadd to it new divineness. 

* Of this latter sort are all true Works of Art : in them 

* (if thou know a Work of Art from a Daub of Artifice) 

* wilt thou discern Eternity looking through Time ; the 

* Godlike rendered visible. Here too may an extrinsic 
' value gradually superadd itself: thus certain Iliads ^ 

* and the like, have, in three thousand years, attained 

* quite new significance. But nobler than all in this 
' kind are the Lives of heroic, god-inspired Men ; for 
' what other Work of Art is so divine ? In Death too, 
' in the Death of the Just, as the last perfection of a 
' Work of Art, may we not discern symbolic meaning? 
' In that divinely transfigured Sleep, as of Victory, rest- 

* ing over the beloved face which now knows thee no 

* more, read (if thou canst for tears) the confluence of 
' Time with Eternity, and some gleam of the latter peer- 
' ing through. 

* Highest of all Symbols are those wherein the Artist 
' or Poet has risen into Prophet, and all men can re- 
' cognise a present God, and worship the same : I mean 

* religious Symbols. Various enough have been such 

* religious Symbols, what we call Religions ; as men 

* stood in this stage of culture or the other, and could 

* worse or better body forth the Godlike : some Symbols 

* with a transient intrinsic worth j many with only an 

* extrinsic. If thou ask to what height man has carried 

* it in this matter, look on our divinest Symbol : on Jesus 

* of Nazareth, and his Life, and his Biography, and what 

* followed therefrom. Higher has the human Thought 



^28 SARTOR RteSARtUS. 

not yet reached : this is Christianity and Christendom ; 
a Symbol of quite perennial, infinite character; whose 
significance will ever demand to be anew inquired into, 
and anew made manifest. 

* But, on the whole, as Time adds much to the sacred- 
ness of Symbols, so likewise in his progress he at 
length defaces, or even desecrates them ; and Symbols, 
like all terrestrial Garments, wax old. Homer's Epos 
has not ceased to be true ; yet it is no longer our Epos, 
but shines in the distance, if clearer and clearer, yet 
also smaller and smaller, like a receding Star. It 
needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be reinterpreted 
and artificially brought near us, before we can so much 
as know that it was a Sun. So likewise a day comes 
when the Runic Thor, with his Eddas, must withdraw 
into dimness ; and many an African Mumbo-Jumbo, 
and Indian Wau-Wau be utterly abolished. For all 
things, even Celestial Luminaries, much more at- 
mospheric meteors, have their rise, their culmination, 
their decline.' 

* Small is this which thou tellest me that the Royal 
Sceptre is but a piece of gilt-wood ; that the Pyx has 
become a most foolish box, and truly, as Ancient Pistol 
thought, ** of little price." A right Conjuror might I 
name thee, couldst thou conjure back into these wooden 
tools the divine virtue they once held.' 

* Of this thing however be certain : wouldst thou plant 
for Eternity, then plant into the deep infinite faculties 
of man, his Fantasy and Heart; wouldst thou plant for 
Year and Day, then plant into his shallow superficial 
faculties, his Self-love and Arithmetical Understanding, 
what will grow there. A Hierarch, therefore, and 



SYMBOLS. 229 

Pontiff of the World will we call him, the Poet and 
inspired Maker ; who, Prometheus-like, can shape new 
Symbols, and bring new Fire from Heaven to fix it 
there. Such too will not always be wanting ; neither 
perhaps now are. Meanwhile, as the average of matters 
goes, we account him Legislator and wise who can so 
much as tell when a Symbol has grown old, and gently 
remove it, , 

' When, as the last English Coronation* was pre- 
paring,' concludes this wonderful Professor, ' I read in 
their Newspapers that the " Champion of England," 
he who must offer battle to the Universe for his new 
King, had brought it so far that iie could now '' mount 
his horse with little assistance," I said to myself: Here 
also we have a Symbol well nigh superannuated. Alas, 
move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters and 
rags of superannuated worn-out Symbols (in this Rag- 
fair of a World) dropping off every where, to hoodwink, 
to halter, to tether you ; nay, if you shake them not 
aside, threatening to accumulate, and perhaps produce 
suffocation.' 



That of George IV.— Ed. 



21 



230 SARTOR RESARTUS* 



CHAPTER IV, 



Melotage. 



At this point we determine on adverting shortly, or rather 
reverting, to a certain Tract of Hofrath Heiischrecke's, 
entitled Institute for the Repression of Population ; 
which lies, dishonourably enough (with torn leaves, 
and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into 
the Bag Pisces. Not indeed for the sake of the Tract 
itself, which we admire little ; but of the marginal 
Notes, evidently in Teufelsdrockh's hand, which rather 
copiously fringe it. A few of these may be in their 
right place here. 

Into the Hofrath's Institute, with its extraordinary 
schemes, and machinery of Corresponding Boards and 
the like, we shall not so much as glance. Enough for 
us to understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple of Mal- 
thus ; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal 
almost literally eats him up. A deadly fear of Popula- 
tion possesses the Hofrath ; something like a fixed-idea ; 
undoubtedly akin to the more diluted forms of Madness. 
Nowhere, in that quarter of his intellectual world, is 
there light; nothing but a grim shadow of Hunger; 
open mouths opening wider and wider ; a world to ter- 
minate by the frightfuUest consummation: by its too 
dense inhabitants, famished into delirium, universally 
eating one another. To make air for himself in which 



HELOTAGE. 



231 



strangulation, choking enough to a benevolent heart, the 
Hofrath founds, or proposes to found, this Institute of 
his, as the best he can do. It is only with our Profes- 
sor's comments thereon that we concern ourselves. 

First, then, remark that Teufelsdrockh, as a specula- 
tive Radical, has his own notions about human dignity ; 
that the Zahdarm palaces and courtesies have not made 
him forgetful of the Futteral cottages. On the blank 
cover of Heuschrecke's Tract, we find the following in- 
distinctly engrossed : 

' Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toilworn 

* Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously 
' conquers the Earth, and makes her man's. Venerable 
'to me is the hard Hand; crooked, coarse; wherein 
' notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly royal, 

* as of the Sceptre of this Planet. Venerable too is the 
'rugged face, all weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude 
' intelligence ; for it is the face of a Man living manlike. 

* Oh, but the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even 
' because we must pity as well as love thee ! Hardly- 

* entreated Brother ! For us was thy back so bent, for 
' us were thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed : 
' thou wert our Conscript, on whom* the lot fell, and 
' fighting our battles wert so marred. For in thee too 
' lay a god-created Form, but it was not to be unfolded ; 
' encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and 
' defacements of Labour ; and thy body like thy soul was 

* not to know freedom. Yet toil on, toil on : thou art in 
' thy duty, be out of it who may ; thou toilest for the al- 

* together indispensable, for daily bread. 

* A second man I honour, and still more highly : Him 
' who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not 



232 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 



daily bread, but the Bread of Life. Is not he too in 
his duty ; endeavouring towards inward Harmony ; re- 
vealing this, by act or by word, through all his outward 
endeavours, be they high or low ? Highest of all, 
when his outward and his inward endeavour are one : 
when we can name him Artist ; not earthly Craftsman 
only, but inspired Thinker, that with heaven-made Im- 
plement conquers Heaven for us! If the poor and 
humble toil that we have Food, must not the high and 
glorious toil for him in return, that he have Light, have 
Guidance, Freedom, Immortality? — These two, in all 
their degrees, I honour : all else is chaff and dust, which 
let the wind blow whither it listeth.f ""^" 
* Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find 
both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly 
for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly 
for the hicrhest. Sublimer in this world know I no- 
thing than a Peasant Saint, could such now any where 
be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Naza- 
reth itself; thou wilt see the splendour of Heaven spring 
forth from the humblest depths of Earth, like a light 
shining in great darkness.' 

And again : ' It is not because of his toils that I la- 
ment for the poor : we must all toil, or steal (howso- 
ever we name our stealing), which is worse ; no faithful 
workman finds his task a pastime. The poor is hungry 
and athirst, but for him also there is food and drink : he 
is heavy-laden and weary ; but for him also the Heavens 
send Sleep, and of the deepest ; in his smoky cribs, a 
clear dewy heaven of Rest envelopes him, and fitful 
glitterings of cloud-skirted Dreams. But what I do 
mourn over is that the lamp of his soul should go out ; 



HEL0TA6E. 233 

that no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly knowledge, 
should visit him ; but, only in the haggard darkness, 
like two spectres, Fear and Indignation. Alas, while 
the Body stands so broad and brawny, must the Soul 
lie blinded, dwarfed, stupified, almost annihilated! 
Alas, was this too a Breath of God : bestowed in 
Heaven, but on earth never to be unfolded ! — That 
there should one Man die Ignorant who had capacity 
for Knowledge, this 1 call a tragedy, were it to happen 
more than twenty times in the minute, as by some 
computations it does. The miserable fraction of 
Science which united mankind, in a wide ifniverse of 
Nescience, has acquired, why is not this, with all dili- 
gence, imparted to all ? ' 

Quite in an opposite strain is the following : * The old 
Spartans had a wiser method ; and went out and 
hunted down their Helots, and speared and spitted 
them, when they grew too numerous. With our im- 
proved fashions of hunting, Herr Hofrath, now after 
the invention of fire-arms, and standing armies, how^ 
much easier were such a hunt ! Perhaps in the most 
thickly-peopled country, some three days annually 
might suffice to shoot all the. able-bodied Paupers that 
had accumulated within the year. Let Governments 
think of this. The expense were trifling : nay, the 
very carcasses would pay it. Have them salted and 
barrelled ; could not you victual therewith, if not Army 
and Navy, yet richly such infirm Paupers, in work- 
houses and elsewhere, as enlightened Charity, dreading 
no evil of them, might see good to keep alive ? ' 

* And yet,' writes he farther on, * there must be some- 
* thing wrong. A full-formed Horse will, in any market, 
21* 



234 



SARTOR RESAISTUS. 



* bring from twenty to as high as two hundred Friedrichs 

* d'or : such is his worth to the world. A full-formed 
' Man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the 
' world could afford him a round sum would he simply 
' engage to go and hang hitnself. Nevertheless, which 
' of the two was the more cunningly-devised article, even 

* as an Engine? Good Heavens! A white European 

* Man, standing on his two Legs, with his two five-fin- 
' gered Hands at his shackle-bones, and miraculous 

* Head on his shoulders, is worth, I should say, from 

* fifty to a hundred Horses ! ' 

' True, thou Gold-Hofrath,' cries the Professor else- 
where : * too crowded indeed ! Meanwhile, what por- 
tion of this inconsiderable terraqueous Globe have ye 
actually tilled -and delved, till it will grow no more ? 
How thick stands your Population in the Pampas and 
Savannas of America ; round ancient Carthage, and in 
the interior of Africa ; on both slopes of the Altaic 
chain, in the central Platform of Asia; in Spain, 
Greece, Turkey, Grim Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare ? 
One man, in one year, as I have understood it, if you 
lend him Earth, will feed himself and nine others. 
Alas, where now are the Hengsts and Alarics of our 
still glowing, still expanding Europe ; who, when their 
home is grown too narrow, will enlist and, like Fire- 
pillars, guide onwards those superfluous masses of indo- 
mitable living Valour ; equipped, not now with the 
battle-axe and war-chariot, but with the steam-engine 
and ploughshare ? — Where are they ? — Preserving their 
Game!' 



THE PUGENIX. 235 



CHAPTER V. 



THE PHCENIX. 



Putting which four singular Cliapters together, and 
alongside of them numerous hints, and even direct utter- 
ances, scattered over these Writings of his, we come 
upon the startling yet not quite unlooked-for conclusion, 
that Teufelsdrockh is one of those who consider Society, 
properly so called, to be as good as extinct ; and that 
only the Gregarious feelings, and old inherited habitudes, 
at this juncture, hold us from Dispersion, and universal 
national, civil, domestic and personal war ! He says ex- 
pressly : * For the last three centuries, above all, for the 

* last three quarters of a century, that same Peri-cardial 

* Nervous Tissue (as we named it) of Religion, where 
' lies the Life-essence of Society, has been smote at and 
'perforated, needfully and needlessly; till now it is 
' quite rent into shreds ; and Society, long pining, dia- 
' betic, consumptive, can be regarded as defunct ; for 
'those spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings are not life,* 

* neither indeed will they endure, galvanise as you may, 
' beyond two days.' 

* Call ye that a Society,' cries he again, * where there 

* is no longer any Social Idea extant ; not so much as 
' the Idea of a common Home, but only of a common, 
' over-crowded Lodging-house ? Where each, isolated, 
' regardless of his neighbour, turned against his neigh- 



236 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* hour, clutches what he can get, and cries " Mine ! " 

* and calls it Peace, because, in the cut-purse and cut- 

* throat Scramble, no steel knives, but only a far cun- 

* ninger sort, can be employed ? Where Friendship, 
' Communion, has become an incredible tradition ; and 
' your holiest Sacramental Supper is a smoking Tavern 

* Dinner, with Cook for Evangelist ? Where your Priest 

* has no tongue but for plate-licking : and your high 

* Guides and Governors cannot guide ; but on all hands 
' hear it passionately proclaimed : Laissez faire ; Leave 

* us alone of your guidance, such light is darker than 
' darkness ; eat your wages, and sleep ! 

' Thus, too,* continues he, ' must an observant eye 

* discern every where that saddest spectacle : The Poor 

* perishing, like neglected, foundered Draught-Cattle, of 

* Hunger and Overwork ; the Rich, still more wretch- 

* edly, of ■ Idleness, Satiety, and Overgrowth. The 

* Highest in rank, at length, without honour from the 
'Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth-honour, as from 
' tavern-waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once 

* sacred Symbols fluttering as empty Pageants, whereof 

* men grudge even the expense ; a world becoming dis- 

* mantled : in one word, the Church fallen speechless, 

* from obesity and apoplexy ; the State shrunken into a 

* Police-Office, straitened to get its pay 1 ' 

We might ask, are there many * observant eyes,' be- 
longing to Practical men, in England or elsewhere, which 
have descried these phenomena ; or is it only from the 
mystic elevation of a German Wahngasse that such won- 
ders are visible? Teufelsdrockh contendsthatthe aspect of 
a * deceased or expiring Society,' fronts us everywhere, so 
that whoso runs may read. * What, for example,' says 



THE PHCENrX. 



237 



he, 4is the universally-arrogated Virtue, almost the sole 
' remaining Catholic Virtue, of these days ? For some 

* half century, it has been the thing you name, " Inde- 
' pendence." Suspicion of *' Servility," of reverence 

* for Superiors the very dogleech is anxious to disavow. 

* Fools ! Were your Superiors worthy to govern, and you 

* worthy to obey, reverence for them were even your only 

* possible freedom. Independence, in all kinds, is 
» rebellion ; if unjust rebellion, why parade it, and every 

* where prescribe it ? ' 

But what then? Are we returning, as Rousseau 
prayed, to the state of Nature ? ' The Soul Politic 

* having departed,' says Teufelsdrockh, ' what can follow 

* but that the Body Politic be decently interred, to avoid 

* putrescence ? Liberals, Economists, Utilitarians enough 

* I see marching with its bier, and chaunting loud pseans, 

* towards the funeral-pile, where, amid waitings from 

* some, and saturnalian revelries from the most, the 
' venerable Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, 
'that these men, Liberals, Utilitarians, or whatsoever 

* they are called, will ultimately carry their point, and 
' dissever and destroy most existing Institutions of 
' Society, seems a thing which has some time ago ceased 
' to be doubtful. 

* Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand Utili- 
' tarian Armament come to light even in insulated Eng- 

* land ? A living nucleus, that will attract and grow, 
' does at length appear there also ; and under curious 

* phasis ; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so 

* far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself the van. 

* Our European Mechanisers are a sect of boundless 

* diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit ; has not 



238 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

'Utilitarianism flourished in high places of Th#ight, 

* here among ourselves, and in every European country, 

* at some time or other, within the last fifty years? If 

* now in all countries, except perhaps England, it has 

* ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, among Thinkers, 

* and sunk to Journalists and the popular mass, — who 

* sees not that, as hereby it no longer preaches, so the 

* reason is, it now needs no preaching, but is in full 
' universal Action, the doctrine every where known and 
'enthusiastically laid to heart? The fit pabulum, in 
' these times, for a certain rugged workshop-intellect and 
' heart, nowise without their corresponding workshop- 
' strength and ferocity, it requires but to be stated in such 
' scenes to make proselytes enough. — Admirably calcu- 
' lated for destroying, only not for rebuilding ! It spreads 

* like a sort of Dog-madness ; till the whole World- 

* kennel will be rabid : then woe to the Huntsmen, with 

* or without their whips ! They should have given the 

* quadrupeds water,' adds he, ' the water, namely, of 

* Knowledge and of Life, while it was yet time.' 

Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, we 
are at this hour in a most critical condition ; beleaguered 
by that boundless ' Armament of Mechanisers ' and Un- 
believers, threatening to strip us bare ! ' The World,' says 
he, ' as it needs must, is under a process of devastation 

* and waste, which, whether by silent assiduous corrosion, 
' or open quicker combustion, as the case chances, will 

* effectually enough annihilate the past Forms of Society ; 

* replace them with what it may. For the present, it is 

* contemplated that when man's whole Spiritual In- 
' terests are once divested, these innumerable stript-off 
< Garments shall mostly be burnt ; but the sounder Rags 



THE I'HCENIX. 239 

* among them be quilted together into one huge Irish 

* watch-coat for the defence of the Body only ! ' — ^T^'his, we 
think, is but Job's news to the humane reader. 

* Nevertheless,' cries Teufelsdrockh, ' who can hinder 

* it ; who is there that can clutch into the wheel-spokes 

* of Destiny, and say to the Spirit of the Time: Turn 

* back, I command thee? — Wiser were it that we yielded 

* to the Inevitable and Inexorable, and accounted even 

* this the best.' 

Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing his own 
inferences from what stands written, conjecture that 
Teufelsdrockh individually had yielded to this same 

* Inevitable and Inexorable ' heartily enough ; and now 
sat waiting the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical 
Indifference, if not even Placidity? Did we not hear 
him complain that the World was a ' huge Ragfair,' and 
the * rags and tatters of old Symbols' were raining down 
every where, like to drift him in, and suffocate him ? 
What with those * unhunted Helots '^ of his ; and the un^ 
even sic-vos-non-vobis pressure, and hard crashing colli- 
sion he is pleased to discern in existing things ; what 
with the so hateful 'empty Masks,' full of beetles and 
spiders, yet glaring out on him, from their glass-eyes, 

* with a ghastly affectation of life,' — we feel entitled to 
conclude him even willing that much should be thrown 
to the Devil, so it were but done gently ! Safe himself 
in that ' Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo,' he would consent, 
with a tragic solemnity, that the monster UTILITARIA, 
held back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, halters, 
foot-shackles, and every conceivable modification of rope, 
should go forth to do her work ; — to tread down old 
ruinous Palaces and Temples, with her broad hoof, till 



240 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

the whole were trodden down, that new and better might 
be built ! Remarkable in this jDoint of view are the 
following sentences. 

* Society,' says he, * is not dead : that Carcass, which 

* you call dead Society, is but her mortal coil which she 

* has shuffled off, to assume a nobler ; she herself, through 

* perpetual metamorphoses, in fairer and fairer develope- 
' ment, has to live till Time also merge in Eternity. 

* Wheresoever two or three Living Men are gathered 

* together, there is Society ; or there it will be, with its 

* cunning mechanisms ; and stupendous structures, over- 

* spreading this little Globe, and reaching upwards to 
' Heaven and downwards to Gehenna : for always, under 

* one or the other figure, it has two authentic Revela- 

* tions, of a God and of a Devil ; the Pulpit, namely, and 

* the Gallows.' 

Indeed, we already heard him speak of * Religion, in 

* unnoticed nooks, weaving for herself new Vestures ;' — 
Teufelsdrockh himself being one of the loom-treadles? 
Elsewhere he quotes without censure that strange aphor- 
ism of Saint-Simon's, concerning which and whom so 
much were to be said : " L'age d'or qu'une aveugle tradi- 
Hon a place jusqu'ici dans le passe est devant nous ; 
The golden age which a blind tradition has hitherto 
placed in the Past is Before us." — But listen again : 

* When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral pyre, will 

* there not be sparks flying 1 Alas, some millions of 
' men, and among them such as a Napoleon, have already 

* been licked into that high-eddying Flame, and like 

* moths, consumed there. Still also have we to fear that 

* incautious beards will get singed. 

* For the rest, in what year of grace such Phoenix- 



THE PHCENIX. 241 

cremation will be completed, you need not ask. The 
law of Perseverance is among the deepest in man : by 
nature he hates change : seldom will he quit his old 
house till it has actually fallen about his ears. Thus 
have I seen Solemnities linger as Ceremonies, sacred 
Symbols as idle Pageants, to the extent of three hun- 
dred years and more after all life and sacredness had 
evaporated out of them. And then, finally, what time 
the Phoenix Death-Birth itself will require, depends on 
unseen contingencies. — Meanwhile, would Destiny offer 
Mankind that after, say two centuries of convulsion 
and conflagration, more or less vivid, the fire-creation 
should be accomplished, and we find ourselves again 
in a Living Society, and no longer fighting but working, 
— were it not perhaps prudent in Mankind to strike the 
bargain ? ' 
Thus is Teufelsdrockh content that old sick Society 
should be deliberately burnt (alas ! with quite other fuel 
than spice-wood) ; in the faith that she is a Phoenix ; 
and that a new heavenborn young one will rise out of 
her ashes ! We ourselves, restricted to the duty of 
Indicator, shaU forbear commentary. Meanwhile, will 
not the judicious reader shake his head, and reproach- 
fully, yet more in sorrow than in anger, say or think : 
From a Doctor Utriusque Juris, titular Professor in a 
University, and man to whom hitherto, for his services, 
Society, bad as she is, has given not only food and 
raiment (of a kind) but books, tobacco and gukguk, we 
expected more gratitude to his benefactress ; and less of 
a blind Trust in the future, which resembles that rather 
of a philosophical Fatalist and Enthusiast, than of a solid 
householder paying scot and lot in a Christian country. 
22 



242 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER VI. 



OLD CLOTHES. 



As mentioned above, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculot- 
tist, is in practice probably the politest man extant : his 
whole heart and life are penetrated and informed with 
the spirit of Politeness ; a noble natural Courtesy shines 
through him, beautifying his vagaries ; like sun-light, 
making a rosy-fingered, rainbow-dyed Aurora out of mere 
aqueous clouds; nay, brightening London smoke itself 
into gold vapour, as from the crucible of an alchemist. 
Hear in what earnest though fantastic wise he expresses 
himself on this head : 
i * Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, and only by 

* the rich ? In Good-breeding, which differs, if at all, 

* from High-breeding, only as it gracefully remembers 

* the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists on 

* its own rights, I discern no special connexion with 

* wealth or birth : but rather that it lies in human nature 

* itself, and is due from all men towards all men. Of a 

* truth, were your Schoolmaster at his post, and worth 

* any thing when there, this, with so much else, would 

* be reformed. Nay, each man were then also his neigh- 

* hour's schoolmaster ; till at length a rude-visaged, un- 

* mannered Peasant could no more be met with, than a 

* Peasant unacquainted with botanical Physiology, or who 

* felt not that the clod he broke was created in Heaven. 



OLD CLOTHES. 243 

* For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge-hammer, 

* art thou not alive ; is not this thy brother alive ? 

* " There is but one Temple in the world," says Novalis, 

* " and that Tempte is the Body of Man. Nothing is 

* holier than this high Form. Bending before men is a 

* reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We 
' touch Heaven, when we lay our hands on a human 
*Body." 

' On which ground, I would fain carry it farther than 

* most do ; and whereas the English Johnson only bowed 

* to every Clergyman, or man with a shovel-hat, I would 

* bow to every Man with any sort of hat, or with no hat 

* whatever. Is he not a Temple, then ; the visible Mani- 

* festation and Impersonation of the Divinity? And yet, 

* alas, such indiscriminate bowing serves not. For there 
' is a Devil dwells in man, as well as a Divinity ; and 

* too often the bow is but pocketed by the former. It 

* would go to the pocket of Vanity (which is your clearest 

* phasis of the Devil, in these times) ; therefore must we 

* withhold it. 

' The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do reverence 

* to those Shells and outer Husks of the Body, wherein 
' no devilish passion any longer lodges, but only the 

* pure emblem and effigies of Man : I mean, to Empty, 

* or even to Cast Clothes. Nay, is it not to Clothes that 

* most men do reverence : to the fine frogged broad- 

* cloth, nowise to the '' straddling animal with bandy 
' legs" which it holds, and makes a Dignitary of? Who 

* ever saw any Lord my-lorded in tattered blanket, 
' fastened with a wooden skewer ? Nevertheless, I say, 
' there is in such worship a shade of hypocrisy, a practi- 

* cal deception : for how often does the Body appropriate 



244 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

what was meant for the CJoth only ! Whoso would 
avoid Falsehood, which is the essence of all Sin, will 
perhaps see good to take a different course. That 
reverence which cannot act without obstruction and 
perversion when the Clothes are full, may have free 
course when they are empty. Even as, for Hindoo 
Worshippers, the Pagoda is not less sacred than the 
God ; so do I too worship the hollow cloth Garment 
with equal fervour, as when it contained tlie Man : nay, 
with more, for I now fear no deception, of myself or of 
others. 

' Did not King Toumtabard, or, in other words, John 
Balliol, reign long over Scotland ; the man John Bal~ 
liol being quite gone, and only the '* Toom Tabard" 
(Empty Gown) remaining? What still dignity dwells 
in a suit of Cast Clothes! How meekly it bears its 
honours ! No haughty looks, no scornful gesture ; 
silent and serene, it fronts the world ; neither demand- 
ing worship, nor afraid to miss it. The Hat still carries 
the physiognomy of its Head : but the vanity and the 
stupidity, and goose-speech which was the sign of these 
two, are gone. The Coat-arm is stretched out, but not 
to strike ; the Breeches, in modest simplicity, depend 
at ease, and now at last have a graceful flow ; the Waist- 
coat hides no evil passion, no riotous desire ; hunger or 
thirst now dwells not in it. Thus all is purged from 
the grossness of sense, from the carking cares and foul 
vices of the World ; and rides there, on its Clothes- 
horse ; as, on a Pegasus, might some skyey Messenger, 
or purified Apparition, visiting our low Earth. 

* Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous Tuberosity 
of Civilised Life, the Capital of England ; and meditated, 



OLD CLOTHES. 245 

and questioned Destiny, under that ink-sea of vapour, 
black, thick, and multifarious as Spartan broth ; and 
was one lone Soul amid those grinding millions ; — 
often have I turned into their Old-Clothes Market to 
worship. With awe-struck heart I walk through that 
Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, as through a 
Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. Silent are they, but 
expressive in their silence : the past witnesses and 
instruments of Woe and Joy, of Passions, Virtues, 
Crimes, and all the fathomless tumult of Good and 
Evil in " the Prison called Life." Friends ! trust not 
the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are not 
venerable. Watch too, with reverence, that bearded 
Jewish Highpriest, who with hoarse voice, like some 
Angel of Doom, summons them from the four winds ! 
On his head, like the Pope, he has three Hats, — a real 
triple tiara ; on either hand, are the similitude of Wings, 
whereon the summoned Garments come to alight ; and 
ever, as he slowly cleaves the air, sounds forth his deep 
fateful note, as if through a trumpet he were proclaim- 
ing: "Ghosts of Life, come to Judgment!" Reck 
not, ye fluttering Ghosts : he will purify you in his 
Purgatory, with fire and with water ; and, one day, 
new-created ye shall reappear. Oh ! let him in whom 
the flame of Devotion is ready to go out, who has never 
worshipped, and knows not what to worship, pace 
and repace, with austerest thought, the pavement of 
Monmouth Street, and say whether his heart and his 
eyes still continue dry. If Field Lane, with its long 
fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a Dionysius' 
Ear, where, in stifled jarring hubbub, we hear the 
Indictment which Poverty and Vice bring against lazy 
22* 



246 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* Wealth, that it has left them there cast out and trodden 

* under foot of Want, Darkness, and the Devil, — then is 
' Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, where, in motley 

* vision, the whole Pageant of Existence passes awfully 

* before us ; with its wail and jubilee, mad loves and 

* mad hatreds, church-bells and gallows-ropes, farce- 

* tragedy, beast-god hood, — the Bedlam of Creation 1' 

To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will seem 
overcharged. We too have walked through Monmouth 
Street ; but with little feeling of ' Devotion :' probably 
in part because the contemplative process is so fatally 
broken in upon by the brood of money-changers, who 
nestle in that Church, and importune the worshipper 
with merely secular proposals. Whereas Teufelsdrockh 
might be in that happy middle-state, which leaves to 
the Clothes-broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, 
and so be allowed to linger there without molestation. — 
Something we would have given to see the little philoso- 
phical Figure, with its steeple-hat and loose flowing skirts, 
and eyes in a fine frenzy, ' pacing and repacing in austerest 
thought' that foolish Street; which to him was a true 
Delphic avenue, and supernatural Whispering-gallery, 
where the 'Ghosts of Life' rounded strange secrets in 
his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdrockh, that listenest 
while others only gabble, and with thy quick tympanum 
hearest the grass grow 1 

At the same time, is it not strange that, in Paperbag 
Documents destined for an English Work, there exists 
nothing like an authentic diary of this his sojourn in 
London ; and of his Meditations among the Clothes-shops 
only the obscurest emblematic shadows? Neither, in 



m 



OLD CLOTHES. 



247 



conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to pester you 
with his Travels), have we heard him more than allude 
to the subject. 

For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting that 
we here find how early the significance of Clothes had 
dawned on the now so distinguished Clothes-Professor. 
Might we but fancy it to have been even in Monmouth 
Street, at the bottom of our own English ' ink-sea,' that 
this remarkable Volume first took being, and shot forth 
its salient point in his soul, — as in Chaos did the Egg of 
Eros, one day to be hatched into a Universe ! 



248 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



'^T 



>'.' 



M' CHAPTER VII 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 



For us, who happen to live while the World-Phoenix is 
burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as Teufels- 
drockh calculates, it were a handsome bargain would 
she engage to have done * within two centuries,' there 
seems to lie but an ashy prospect. Not altogether so, 
however, does the Professor figure it. * In the living 
' subject,' says he, * change is wont to be gradual : thus, 

* while the serpent sheds its old skin, the new is already 
' formed beneath. Little knowest thou of the burning 

* of a World-Phoenix, who fanciest that she must first 
' burn out, and lie as a dead cinereous heap ; and there- 

* from the young one start up by miracle, and fly heaven- 

* ward. Far otherwise ! In that Fire-whirlwind, 

* Creation and Destruction proceed together ; ever as the 

* ashes of the Old are blown about, do organic filaments 

* of the New mysteriously spin themselves : and amid 

* the rushing and the waving of the Whirlwind-Element, 

* come tones of a melodious Deathsong, which end not 

* but in tones of a more melodious Birthsong. Nay, 
' look into the Fire-whirlwind with thy own eyes, and 
' thou wilt see.' Let us actually look, then : to poor 
individuals, who cannot expect to live two centuries, 
those same organic filaments, mysteriously spinning 
themselves, will be the best part of the spectacle. First, 
therefore, this of Mankind in general : 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 249 

* In vain thou deniest it,' says the Professor ; * thou 

* art my Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very Envy, 

* those foolish Lies thou tellest of me in thy splenetic 

* humour : what is all this but an inverted Sympathy ? 

* Were 1 a Steam-engine, wouldst thou take the trouble 

* to tell Lies of me ? Not thou ! I should grind all 

* unheeded, whether badly or well. 

* Wondrous truly are the bonds that unite us one and 

* all ; whether by the soft binding of Love, or the iron 

* chaining of Necessity, as we like to choose it. More 
' than once, have I said to myself, of some perhaps 

* whimsically strutting Figure, such as provokes whim- 
' sical thoughts : " Wert thou, my little Brotherkin, sud- 

* denly covered up within the largest imaginable Glass- 

* bell, — what a thing it were, not for thyself only, but 

* for the world ! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all 

* the four winds, impinge against thy Glass walls, but 

* must drop unread : neither from within comes there 

* question or response into any Postbag ; thy Thoughts 

* fall into no friendly ear or heart, thy Manufacture into 
' no purchasing hand ; thou art no longer a circulating 
'venous-arterial Heart, that, taking and giving, circu- 

* latest through all Space and all Time : there has a 

* Hole fallen out in the immeasurable, universal World- 

* tissue, which must be darned up again ! " 

' Such venous-arterial circulation, of Letters, verbal 

* Messages, paper and other Packages, going out from 
' him and coming in, are a blood-circulation, visible to 

* the eye : but the finer nervous circulation, by which all 
' things, the minutest that he does, minutely influence 

* all men, and the very look of his face blesses or curses 

* whomso it lights on, and so generates ever new blessing 



250 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

or new cursing : all this you cannot see, but only ima- 
gine. I say, there is not a red Indian, hunting by Lake 
Winnipic, can quarrel with his squaw, but the whole 
world must smart for it : will not the price of beaver 
rise ? It is a mathematical fact that the casting of this 
pebble from my hand alters the centre of gravity of 
the Universe. 

* If now an existing generation of men stand so 
woven together, not less indissolubly does generation 
with generation. Hast thou ever meditated on that 
word Tradition : how we inherit not Life only, but all 
the garniture and form of Life ; and work, and speak, 
and even think and feel, as our Fathers, and primeval 
grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it us ? — 
Who printed thee, for example, this unpretending 
Volume on the Philosophy of Clothes ? Not the Herren 
Stillschweigen and Company : but Cadmus of Thebes, 
Faust of Mentz, and innumerable others whom thou 
knowest not. Had there been no Msesogothic Ulfila, 
there had been no English Shakespeare, or a different 
one. Simpleton ! it was Tubalcain that made thy 
very Tailor's needle, and sewed that court suit of 
thine. 

* Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a living indivisible 
whole, much more is Mankind, the Image that reflects 
and creates Nature, without which Nature were not. 
As palpable life-streams in that wondrous Individual 
Mankind, among so many life-streams that are not 
palpable, flow on those main-currents of what we call 
Opinion ; as preserved in Institutions, Polities, Churches, 
above all in Books. Beautiful it is to understand and 
know that a Thought did never yet die ; that as thou, 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 251 

* the originator thereof, hast gathered it and created it 

* from the whole Past, so thou wilt transmit it to the 

* whole Future. It is thus that the heroic Heart, the 

* seeing Eye of the first times, still feels and sees in us 

* of the latest ; that the Wise Man stands ever encom- 

* passed, and spiritually embraced, by a cloud of wit- 

* nesses and brothers ; and there is a living, literal Com- 

* munion of Saints , wide as the World itself, and as the 

* History of the World. 

* Noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress 

* of this same Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision 

* into Generations. Generations are as the days of 

* toilsome Mankind ; Death and Birth are the vesper and 

* the matin bells, that summon Mankind to sleep, and 

* to rise refreshed for new advancement. What the 

* Father has made the Son can make and enjoy ; but has 

* also work of his own appointed him. Thus all things 

* wax, and roll onwards ; Arts, Establishments, Opinions, 

* nothing is completed, but ever completing. Newton 

* has learned to see what Kepler saw ; but there is also 

* a fresh heaven-derived force in Newton ; he must 

* mount to still higher points of vision. So too the 

* Hebrew Lawgiver is, in due time, followed by an 

* Apostle of the Gentiles. In the business of Destruction, 

* as this also is from time to time a necessary work, thou 

* findest a like sequence and perseverance : for Luther it 

* was as yet hot enough to stand by that burning of the 

* Pope's Bull; Voltaire could not warm himself at the 

* glimmering ashes, but required quite other fuel. Thus 

* likewise, I note, the English Whig has, in the second 

* generation, become an English Radical ; who, in the 

* third again, it is to be hoped, will become an English 



352 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* Rebuilder. Find Mankind where tiiou wilt, thou findest 

* it in living movement, in progress faster or slower : the 

* Phoenix soars aloft, hovers with outstretched wings, 
' filling Earth with her music ; or, as now, she sinks, 

* and with spheral swan-song immolates herself in flame, 

* that she may soar the higher and sing the clearer.' 

Let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous 
period, lay this to heart, and derive from it any little 
comfort they can. We subjoin another passage, con- 
cerning Titles : 

' Remark, not without surprise,' says Teufelsdrockh, 

* how all high Titles of Honour come hitherto from 
' Fighting. Your Herzog (Duke, Dux) is Leader of 

* Armies ; your Earl (Jarl) is Strong Man ; your 

* Marshall cavalry Horse-shoer. A Millenium, or reign 

* of Peace and Wisdom, having from of old been pro- 

* phesied, and becoming now daily more and more indu- 

* bitable, may it not be apprehended that such Fighting- 

* titles will cease to be palatable, and new and higher 

* need to be devised ? 

* The only Title wherein I, with confidence, trace 

* eternity, is that of King. Konig (King), anciently 

* Konning means Ken-ning (Cunning), or which is the 

* same thing, Can-ning. Ever must the SovereigJi of 

* Mankind be fitly entitled King.' 

' Well, also,' says he elsewhere, ' was it written by 

* Theologians : a King rules by divine right. He carries 

* in him an authority from God, or man will never give 

* it him. Can I choose my own King 1 I can choose 

* my own King Popinjay, and play what farce or tra- 

* gedy I may with him : but he who is to be my Ruler, 

* whose will is to be higher than my will, was chosen for 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 253 

* me in Heaven. Neither except in such Obedience to 
' the Heaven-chosen is Freedom so much as con- 

* ceivable.' 

The Editor will here admit that, among all the 
wondrous provinces of Teufelsdrockh's spiritual world, 
there is none he walks in with such astonishment, hesi- 
tation, and even pain, as in the Political. How, with 
our English love of Ministry and Opposition, and that 
generous conflict of Parties, mind warming itself against 
mind in their mutual wrestle for the Public Good, by 
which wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable Constitution 
kept warm and alive ; how shall we domesticate ourselves 
in this spectral Necropolis, or rather City both of the 
Dead and of the Unborn, where the Present seems little 
other than an inconsiderable Film dividing the Past and 
the Future? In those dim longdrawn expanses, all is so 
immeasurable ; much so disastrous, ghastly ; your very 
radiances, and straggling light-beams, have a superna- 
tural character. And then with such an indifference, 
such a prophetic peacefulness (accounting the inevitably- 
coming as already here, to him all one whether it be dis- 
tant by centuries or only by days), does he sit ; — and 
live, you would say, rather in any other age than in his 
own 1 It is our painful duty to announce, or repeat, 
that, looking into this man, we discern a deep, silent, 
slow-burning, inextinguishable Radicalism, such as fills 
us with shuddering admiration. 

Thus, for example, he appears to make little even of 
the Elective Franchise ; at least so we interpret the fol- 
lowing : ' Satisfy yourselves,' he says, * by universal, 
* indubitable experiment, even as ye are now doing or 
23 



254 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

' will do, whether Freedom, heavenborn and leading 

* heavenward, and so vitally essential for us all, cannot 

* peradventure be mechanically hatched and brought to 

* light in that same Ballot-Box of yours ; or at worst, in 

* some other discoverable or devisable Box, Edifice, or 

* Steam-mechanism. It were a mighty convenience ; 
"* and beyond all feats of manufacture witnessed hitherto.* 

Is Teufelsdrockh acquainted with the British Constitu- 
tion, even slightly? — He says, under another figure: 

* But after all, were the problem, as indeed it now every- 

* where is. To rebuild your old House from the top 

* downwards (since you must live in it the while), what 

* better, what other, than the Representative Machine 

* will serve your turn? Meanwhile, however, mock me 

* not with the name of Free, ** when you have but knit 

* up my chains into ornamental festoons." ' — Or what 
will any member of the Peace Society make of such an 
assertion as this : * The lower people everywhere desire 
' War. Not so unwisely ; there is then a demand for 

* lower people — to be shot ! ' 

Gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul-con- 
fusing labyrinths of speculative Radicalism, into some- 
what clearer regions. Here, looking round, as was our 
hest, for * organic filaments,' we ask, may not this, 
touching * Hero-worship,' be of the number? It seems 
of a cheerful character; yet so quaint, so mystical, one 
knows not what, or how little, may lie under it. Our 
readers shall look with their own eyes : 

* True is it that, in these days, man can do almost ail 

* things, only not obey. True likewise that whoso can- 

* not obey cannot be free, still less bear rule ; he that is 

* the inferior of nothing, can be the superior of nothing, 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 255 

* the equal of nothing. Nevertheless, believe not that 

* man has lost his faculty of Reverence ; that if it slumber 

* in him, it has gone dead. Painful for man is that same 

* rebellious Independence, when it has become inevitable ; 

* only in loving companionship with his fellows does he 

* feel safe ; only in reverently bowing down before the 
' Higher does he feel himself exalted. 

* Or what if the character of our so troublous Era lay 

* even in this : that man had for ever cast away Fear, 

* which is the lower : but not yet risen into perennial 

* Reverence, which is the higher and highest ? 

* Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has 

* Nature ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey 

* he cannot but obey. Before no faintest revelation of 

* the Godlike did he ever stand irreverent ; least of all, 

* when the Godlike shewed itself revealed in his fellow- 
' man. Thus is there a true religious Loyalty for ever 

* rooted in his heart ; nay, in all ages, even in ours, it 

* manifests itself as a more or less orthodox Hero-wor' 
' ship. In which fact, that Hero-worship exists, has ex- 

* isted, and will for ever exist, universally among Man- 
' kind, mayest thou discern the corner-stone of living- 

* rock, whereon all Polities for the remotest time may 

* stand secure.' 

Do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or even 
so much as what Teufelsdrockh is looking at? He ex- 
claims, ' Or hast thou forgotten Paris and Voltaire ? 

* How the aged, withered man, though but a Sceptic, 
' Mocker, and millinery Court-poet, yet because even he 

* seemed the Wisest, Best, could drag mankind at his 
' chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from 

* him, and the loveliest of France would have laid their 



256 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* hair beneath his feet ! All Paris was one vast Temple 

* of Hero- Worship ; though their Divinity, moreover, 

* was of feature too apish. 

' But if such things,' continues he, * were done in the 

* dry tree, what will be done in the green ? Jf, in the 

* most parched season of Man's History, in the most 

* parched spot of Europe, when Parisian life was at best 

* but a scientific Hortus Siccus, bedizened with some 

* Italian Gumflowers, such virtue could come out of it; 

* what is it to be looked for when Life again waves leafy 

* and bloomy, and your Hero-Divinity shall have nothing 

* apelike, but be wholly human '? Know that there is in 

* man a quite indestructible Reverence for whatsoever 

* holds of Heaven, or even plausibly counterfeits such 

* holding. Shew the dullest clodpole, shew the haugh- 

* tiest featherhead, that a soul Higher than himself is 

* actually here ; were his knees stiffened into brass, he 

* must down and worship.' 

Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, mysteri- 
ously spinning themselves, some will perhaps discover 
in the following passage : 

' There is no Church, sayest thou ? The voice of 

* Prophecy has gone dumb? This is even what I dis- 

* pute : but, in any case, hast thou not still Preaching 

* enough ? A Preaching Friar settles himself in every 

* village ; and builds a pulpit, which he calls News- 

* paper. Therefrom he preaches what most momentous 

* doctrine is in him, for man's salvation ; and dost not 

* thou listen, and believe ? Look well, thou seest every 

* where a new Clergy of the Mendicant Orders, some 

* bare-footed, some almost bare-backed, fashion itself 

* into shape, and teach and preach, zealously enough, for 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 257 

* copper alms and the love of God. These break in 

* pieces the ancient idols ; and, though themselves too 

* often reprobate, as idol-breakers are wont to be, mark 

* out the sites of new Churches, where the true God- 

* ordained, that are to follow, may find audience, and 
' minister. Said I not, Before the old skin was shed, 

* the new had formed itself beneath it?' 

Perhaps, also, in the following ; wherewith we now 
hasten to knit up this ravelled sleeve : 

* But there is no Religion ? ' reiterates the Professor, 
' Fool ! I tell thee, there is. Hast thou well considered 

* all that lies in this immeasurable froth-ocean we name 
' Literature ? Fragments of a genuine Church-Homi- 

* letic lie scattered there, which Time will assort : nay, 

* fractions even of a Liturgy could I point out. And 

* knowest thou no Prophet, even in the vesture, environ- 

* ment, and dialect of this age ? None to whom the 

* Godlike had revealed itself, through all meanest and 

* highest forms of the Common ; and by him been again 

* prophetically revealed : in whose inspired melody, even 

* in these rag-gathering and rag-burning days, Man's 

* Life again begins, were it but afar off, to be divine ? 

* Knowest thou none such X I know him, and name 
' him — Goethe. 

* But thou as yet standest in no Temple; joinest in 

* no Psalm-worship ; feelest well that, where there is no 

* ministering Priest, the people perish 1 Be of comfort ! 
' Thou art not alone, if thou have Faith. Spake we not 

* of a Communion of Saints, unseen, yet not unreal, ac- 

* companying and brottibr-like embracing thee, so thou 

* be worthy? Their heroic Sufferings rise up melo- 

* diously together to Heaven, out of all lands, and out of 

23* 



258 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* all times, as a sacred Miserere; their heroic Actions 
' also, as a boundless, everlasting Psalm of Triumph. 
' Neither say that thou hast now no Symbol of the God- 

* like. Is not God's Universe a Symbol of the Godlike ; 

* is not Immensity a Temple ; is not Man's History, and 

* Men's History, a perpetual Evangel ? Listen, and for 
' organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morning 

* Stars sing together.' 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 259 



CHAPTER VIII. 



NATURAL SUPERKATURALISM. 



It is in his stupendous Section, headed Natural Super- 
naturalism, that the Professor first becomes a Seer ; 
and, after long effort, such as we have witnessed, finally 
subdues under his feet this refractory Clothes-Philosophy, 
and takes victorious possession thereof. Phantasms 
enough he has had to struggle with ; * Cloth-webs and 
Cobwebs,' of Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Sym- 
bols, and what not : yet still did he courageously pierce 
through. Nay, worst of all, two quite mysterious, world- 
embracing Phantasms, Time and Space, have ever 
hovered round him, perplexing and bewildering : but 
with tbese also he now resolutely grapples, these also he 
victoriously rends asunder. In a word, he has looked 
fixedly on Existence, till, one after the other, its earthly 
hulls and garnitures have all melted away ; and now, to 
his rapt vision, the interior celestial Holy of Holies lies 
disclosed. 

Here therefore properly it is that the Philosophy of 
Clothes attains to Transcendentalism ; this last leap, can 
we but clear it, takes us safe into the promised land, 
where Palingenesia, in all senses, may be considered as 
beginning. * Courage, then I ' may our Diogenes ex- 
claim, with better right than Diogenes the First once 
did. This stupendous Section we, after long painful 



260 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

meditation, have found not to be unintelligible ; but on 
the contrary to grow clear, nay radiant, and all-illumi- 
nating. Let the reader, turning on it what utmost force 
of speculative intellect is in him, do his part ; as we, by 
judicious selection and adjustment, shall study to do 
ours : 

' Deep has been, and is, the significance of Miracles,' 
thus quietly begins the Professor ; ' far deeper perhaps 
than we imagine. Meanwhile, the question of ques- 
tions were : What specially is a Miracle ? To that 
Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle ; 
whoso had carried with him an air-pump, and phial of 
vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle. To my 
Horse again, who unhappily is still more unscientific, 
do nc^t I work a miracle, and magical *' Open sesame!" 
every time I please to pay twopence, and open for him 
an impassable Sclilagbaum, or shut Turnpike? 

* ** But is not a real Miracle simply a violation of the 
Laws of Nature?" ask several. Whom I answer by 
this new question : What are the Laws of Nature ? 
To me perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no 
violation of these Laws, but a confirmation ; were some 
far deeper Law, now first penetrated into, and by Spi- 
ritual Force, even as the rest have all been, brought to 
bear on us with its Material Force. 

' Here too may some inquire, not without astonish- 
ment : On what ground shall one, that can make Iron 
swim, come and declare that therefore he can teach 
Religion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth Century, 
such declaration were inept enough ; which neverthe- 
less to our fathers, of the First Century, was full of 
meaning. 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 



201 



* *' But is it not the deepest Law of Nature that she 
be constant?" cries an illuminated class : " Is not the 
Machine of the Universe fixed to move by unalter- 
able rules 1 " Probable enough, good friends : nay, 
I too must believe that the God, whom ancient, in- 
spired men, assert to be *' without variableness or shadow 
of turning," does indeed never change; that Nature, 
that the Universe, which no one whom it so pleases 
can be prevented from calling a Machine, does move 
by the most unalterable rules. And now of you too I 
make the old inquiry : What those same unalterable 
rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, 
may possibly be ? 

' They stand written in our Works of Science, say 
you ; in the accumulated records of man's Experience ? 
— Was man with his Experience present at the Creation, 
then, to see how it all went on ? Have any deepest 
scientific individuals yet dived down to the foundations 
of the Universe, and gauged every thing there 1 Did 
the Maker take them into His Counsel ; that they read 
His ground-plan of the incomprehensible All ; and can 
say, This stands marked therein, and no more than 
this? Alas, not in anywise ! These scientific indivi- 
duals have been nowhere but where we also are ; have 
seen some handbreadths deeper than we see into the 
Deep that is infinite, without bottom as without shore. 

' Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he exhibits 
that certain Planets, with their Satellites, gyrate round 
our worthy Sun, at a rate and in a course, which, by 
greatest good fortune, he and the like of him have suc- 
ceeded in detecting, — is to me as precious as to 
another. But is this what thou namest " Mechanism 



262 SAllTOR RESARTUS. 

* of the Heavens," and ** System of the World ; " this, 

* wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's 

* Fifteen thousand Suns per minute, being left out, some 

* paltry handful of Moons, and inert Balls, had been — 

* looked at, nicknamed, and marked in the Zodiacal 

* Waybill ; so that we can now prate of their Where- 

* about; their How, their Why, their What, being hid 
' from us as in the signless Inane? 

' System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as is 
' his vision. Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of 

* quite infinite expansion ; and all Experience thereof 

* limits itself to some few computed centuries, and mea- 
' sured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, 

* on this our little fraction of a Planet, is partially known 
' to us : but who knows what deeper courses these de- 

* pend on ; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) our 

* little Epicycle revolves on 1 To the Minnow every 

* cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, of its 

* little native Creek may have become familiar : but does 

* the Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and periodic 

* Currents, the Trade-winds, and Monsoons, and Moon's 

* Eclipses ; by all which the condition of its little Creek 

* is regulated, and may, from time to time (wwmira- 

* culously enough), be quite overset and reversed 1 Such 

* a minnow is man ; his Creek this Planet Earth ; his 

* Ocean the immeasurable All; his Monsoons and pe- 
' riodic Currents the mysterious Course of Providence 

* through ^ons of iEons. 

* We speak of the Volume of Nature : and truly a 

* Volume it is, — whose Author and Writer is God. To 

* read it ! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 263 

'the Alphabet thereof? With its Words, Sentences, 
' and grand descriptive Pages, poetical and philosophical, 
' spread out through Solar Systems, and Thousands of 

* Years, we shall not try thee. It is a Volume written 

* in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writing ; of 
' which even Prophets are happy that they can read 

* here a' line and there a line. As for your Institutes, 

* and Academies of Science, they strive bravely ; and, 

* from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted 

* hieroglyphic writing, pick out, by dexterous combina- 

* tion, some Letters in the vulgar Character, and there- 

* from put together this and the other economic Recipe, 

* of high avail in Practice. That Nature is more than 

* some boundless Volume of such Recipes, or huge, 

* well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic-Cookery Book, of 

* which the whole secret will, in this wise, one day, 

* evolve itself, the fewest dream. 

* Custom,' continues the Professor, ' doth make dotards 

* of us all. Consider well, thou wilt find that Custom 

* is the greatest of Weavers ; and weaves air-raiment 

* for all the Spirits of the Universe ; whereby indeed 

* these dwell with us visibly, as ministering servants, 

* in our houses and workshops ; but their spiritual nature 

* becomes, to the most, for ever hidden. Philosophy 

* complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, from the 

* first ; that we do every thing by Custom, even Believe 

* by it ; that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free- 

* thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs 

* as we have never heard questioned. Nay, what is 

* Philosophy throughout but a continual battle against 



264 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Custom ; an ever-renewed effort to transcend the 
sphere of blind Custom, and so become Transcen- 
dental ? 

' Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain tricks 
of Custom : but of all these perhaps the cleverest is 
her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by 
simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it 
is by this means we live ; for man must work as well 
as wonder : and herein is Custom so far a kind nurse, 
guiding him to his true benefit. But she is a fond 
foolish nurse, or rather we are false foolish nurselings, 
when, in our resting and reflecting hours, we prolong 
the same deception. Am I to view the Stupendous 
with stupid indifference, because I have seen it twice, 
or two hundred, or two million times? There is no 
reason in Nature or in Art why I should : unless, in- 
deed, I am a mere Work-Machine, for whom the divine 
gift of Thought were no other than the terrestrial gift 
of Steam is to the Steam-engine ; a power whereby 
Cotton might be spun, and money and money's worth 
realised. 

' Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou 
find the potency of Names ; which indeed are but one 
kind of such Custom-woven, wonder-hiding garments. 
Witchcraft, and all manner of Spectre-work, and De- 
monology, we have now named Madness, and Diseases 
of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that still the new 
question comes upon us : What is Madness, what are 
Nerves 1 Ever, as before, does Madness remain a 
mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling up of 
the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted 
Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 265 

* name the Real. Was Luther's Picture of the Devil 

* less a Reality, whether it were formed within the 

* bodily eye, or without it 1 In every the wisest Soul, 
' lies a whole world of internal Madness, an authentic 

* Demon-Empire ; out of which, indeed, his world of 

* Wisdom has been creatively built together, and now 

* rests there, as on its dark foundations does a habitable 

* flowery Earth-rind. 

' But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding 

* Wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand 

* fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, Space and 

* Time. These, as spun and woven for us from before 

* Birth itself, to clothe our celestial Me for dwelling 
^ here, and yet to blind it, — lie all-embracing, as the 

* universal canvass, or warp and woof, whereby all minor 

* Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint 

* themselves. In vain, while here on Earth, shall you 

* endeavour to strip them off; you can, at best, but rend 
' them asunder for moments, and look through. 

' Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which when he put 

* on, and wished himself Anywhere, behold he was 

* There. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed 

* over Space, he had annihilated Space ; for him there 

* was no Where, but all was Here. Were a Hatter to 
' establish himself, in the Wahngasse of Weissnichtwo, 
' and make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a 
' world we should have of it ! Still stranger, should, 

* on the opposite side of the street, another Hatter esta- 
' blish himself; and, as his fellow-craftsman made 
' Space-annihilating Hats, make Time-annihilating ! Of 

* both would I purchase, were it with my last groschen ; 

24 



266 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

but chiefly of this latter. To clap on your felt, and, 
simply by wishing that you were Anywhere, straight- 
way to be There! Next to clap on your other felt, 
and, simply by wishing that you were Any when, 
straightway to be Then ! This were indeed the 
grander : shooting at will from the Fire-Creation of 
the World to its Fire-Gonsummation ; here historically 
present in the First Century, conversing face to face 
with Paul and Seneca, there prophetically in the 
Thirty-first, conversing also face to face with other 
Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the 
depth of that late Time 1 

* Or thinkest thou, it were impossible, unimaginable? 
Is the Past annihilated, then, or only past; is the 
Future non-extant, or only future ? Those mystic 
faculties of thine. Memory and Hope, already answer: 
already through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth- 
blinded sammonest both Past and Future, and com- 
munest with them, though as yet darkly, and with 
mute beckonings. The curtains of Yesterday drop 
down, the curtains of To-morrow roll up ; but Yester- 
day and To-morrow both are. Pierce through the 
Time-Element, glance into the Eternal. Believe what 
thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, 
even as all Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it 
there : that Time and Space are not God, but creations 
of God ; that with God as it is a universal Here, so is 
it an Everlasting Now. 

* And seest thou therein any glimpse of Immortality ? 
— O Heaven ! Is the white Tomb of our Loved One, 
who died from our arms, and must be left behind us 
there, which rises in the distance, like a pale, mourn- 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 267 

* fully receding Milestone, to tell how many toilsome 

* uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone, — but a 
' pale spectral Illusion ! Is the lost Friend still mys- 

* teriously Here, even as we are Here mysteriously, with 

* God ! — Know of a truth that only the Time-shadows 

* have perished, or are perishable; that the real Being 

* of whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever will . 

* be, is even now and forever. This, should it un- 
' happily seem new, thou mayest ponder, at thy leisure ; 

* for the next twenty years, or the next twenty centuries : 
' believe it thou must* understand it thou canst not. 

' That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, wherein, 
' once for all, we are sent into this Earth to live, should 

* condition and determine our whole Practical reasonings, 
' conceptions, and imagings or imaginings, — seems alto- 

* gether fit, just, and unavoidable. But that they 

* should, farthermore, usurp such sway over pure spi- 

* ritual Meditation, and blind us to the wonder every- 

* where lying close on us, seems nowise so. Admit 

* Space and Time to their due rank as Forms of Thought ; 
^ nay, even, if thou wilt, to their quite undue rank of 

* Realities : and consider, then, with thyself how their 

* thin disguises hide from us the brightest God-eflful- 
' gences ! Thus, were it not miraculous, could I stretch 

* forth my hand, and clutch the Sun ? Yet thou seest 

* me daily stretch forth my hand, and therewith clutch 
' many a thing, and swing it hither and thither. Art 
' thou a grown Baby, then, to fancy that^ the Miracle 
' lies in miles of distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of 

* weight ; and not to see that the true inexplicable God- 

* revealing Miracle lies in this, that I can stretch forth 

* my hand at all ; that I have free Force to clutch aught 



268 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

therewith ? Innumerable other of this sort are the 
deceptions, and wonder-hiding stupefactions, which 
Space practises on us. 

* Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your grand 
anti-magician, and universal wonder-hider, is this same 
lying Time. Had we but the Time-anniliilating Hat, 
to ]>ut on for once only, we should see ourselves in a 
World of Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic 
Thaumaturgy, and feats of Magic, were ouidone. But 
unhappily we have not such a Hat ; and man, poor fool 
that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself with- 
out one. 

* Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus, 
or Amphion, built the walls of Thebes by the mere 
sound of his Lyre ? Yet tell me, Who built these walls 
of Weissnichtwo ; summoning out all the sandstone 
rocks, to dance along from the Steinbruch (now a huge 
Troglodyte Chasm, with frightful green-mantled pools) ; 
and shape themselves into Doric and Ionic pillars, 
squared ashlar houses, and noble streets? Was it not 
the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in past 
centuries, by the divine Music of Wisdom, succeeded 
in civilising Man ? Our highest Orpheus walked in 
Judea, eighteen hundred years ago : his sphere-melody, 
flowing in wild native tones, took captive the ravished 
souls of men ; and, being of a truth sphere-melody, 
still flows and sounds, though now with thousandfold 
Accompaniments, and rich symphonies, through all 
our hearts ; and modulates, and divinely leads them. 
Is that a wonder, which happens in two hours ; and 
does it cease to be wonderful if happening in two 
million ? Not only was Thebes built by the Music of 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 269 

an Orpheus ; but without the music of some inspired 
Orpheus was no city ever built, no work that man 
glories in ever done, 

* Sweep away the Illusion of Time ; glance, if thou 
have eyes, from the near moving-cause to its far dis- 
tant Mover : The stroke that came transmitted through 
a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a stroke than 
if the last ball only had been struck, and sent flying? 
Oh, could I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport 
thee direct from the Beginnings to the Endings, how 
were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy heart set flaming 
in the Light-sea of celestial wonder ! Then savvest 
thou that this fair Universe, were it in the meanest 
province thereof, is in very.deed the star-domed City of 
God ; that through every star, through every grass- 
blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory 
of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is 
the Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, 
hides Him from the foolish. 

* Again, could any thing be more miraculous than an 
actual authentic Ghost ? The English Johnson longed, 
all his life, to see one ; but could not, though he went 
to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and 
tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, 
with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look 
round him into that full tide of human Life he so 
loved ; did he never so much as look into Himself? The 
good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as 
heart could wish ; well nigh a million of Ghosts were 
travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, 
sweep away the illusion of Time ; compress the three- 
score years into three minutes : what else was he, what 

24* 



270 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* else are we 1 Are we i]ot Spirits, shaped into a Itody, 
'into an Appearance; and that fade away again into 
'air, and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a 

/♦ simple scientific fad : we start out of Nothingness, 

''take figure, and are Apparitions; round us, as round 

' the veriest spectre, is Eternity ; and to Eternity minutes 

* are as years and ssons. Come there not tones of Love 

* and Faith, as from celestial harp-strings, like the Song 

* of beatified Souls? And again, do we not squeak and 

* gibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish debatings 
' and recriminatings) ; and glide bodeful, and feeble, 
' and fearful ; or uproar (poltern), and revel in our mad 

* Dance of the Dead, — till the scent of the morning-air 
' summons us to our still Home; and dreamy Night be- 

* comes awake and Day ? Where now is Alexander of 

* Macedon : does the steel Host, that yelled in fierce 
' battle-shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind him ; 

* or have they all vanished utterly, even as perturbed 
' Goblins must ? Napoleon too, and his Moscow Re- 
' treats and Austerlitz Campaigns! Was it all other than 

* the veriest Spectre-Hunt ; which has now, witKits howl- 
' ing tumult that made Night hideous, flitted away ? — 

* Ghosts ! There are nigh a thousand million walking 

* the earth openly at noontide ; some half-hundred have 

* vanished from it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, 

* ere thy watch ticks once. 

* O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider 

* that we not only carry each a future Ghost within him ; 

* but are, in very deed, Ghosts ! These Limbs, whence 

* had we them; this stormy Force; this life-blood with 
' its burning Passion? They are dust and shadow; a 
'Shadow-system gathered round our Me; wherein, 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 271 

* through some moments or years, the Divine Essence 
' is to be revealed in the Flesh. That M'arrior on his 
' strong war-horse, fire flashes through his eyes ; force 

* dwells in his arm and heart : but warrior and war-horse 

* are a vision ; a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately 

* they tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance : 
' fool ! the Earth is but a film ; it cracks in twain, and 

* warrior and war-horse sink beyond plummet's sounding. 

* Plummet's? Fantasy herself will not follow them. A 

* little while ago they were not ; a little while and they 

* are not, their very ashes are not. 

' So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to 

* the end. Generation after generation takes to itself 
' the Form of a Body ; and forth-issuing from Cimme- 

* rian Night, on Heaven's mission appears. What 

* Force and Fire is in each he expends : one grinding in 

* the mill of Industry ; one hunter-like climbing the 

* giddy Alpine heights of Science ; one madly dashed in 

* pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow : — 

* and then the Heaven-sent is recalled ; his earthly Ves- 

* ture falls away, and soon even to Sense becomes a 

* vanished Shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild- 

* thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mys- 

* terious Mankind thunder and flame, in long-drawn, 

* quick-succeeding grandeur, through the unknown Deep. 

* Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we 

* emerge from the Inane ; haste stormfujly across the 

* astonished Earth ; then plunge again into the Inane. 

* Earth's mountains are levelled, and her seas filled up, 

* in our passage : can the Earth, which is but dead and 

* a vision, resist Spirits which have reality and are 

* alive ? On the hardest adamant some foot-print of us 



272 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

' is Stamped in ; the last Rear of the host will read 
' traces of the earliest Van. But whence? — O Heaven, 
'whither? Sense knows not ; Faith knows not ; only 

• that it is through Mystery to Mystery, from God and 

* to God. 

" We are such stuff 
' As Dreams are made of, and our little Life 
' Is rounded with a sleep ! " 



CIRCUMSPECTIVK. 



273 



CHAPTER IX. 



CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 



Here then arises the so momentous question : Have 
many British Readers actually arrived with us at the 
new promised country; is the Philosophy of Clothes now 
at last opening around them 1 Long and adventurous 
has the journey been : from those outmost vulgar, palpa- 
ble Woollen-Hulls of Man ; through his wondrous Flesh- 
Garments, and his wondrous Social Garnitures ; inwards 
to the Garments of his very Soul's Soul, to Time and 
Space themselves ! And now does the Spiritual, eternal 
Essence of Man, and of Mankind, bared of such wrap- 
pages, begin in any measure to reveal itself? Can many 
readers discern, as through a glass darkly, in huge 
wavering outlines, some primeval rudiments of Man's 
Being, what is changeable divided from what is un^ 
changeable? Does that Earth-Spirit's speech* in 
Faust : 

' 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, 

' And weave for God the Garment thou see'st him by ; ' 

or that other thousand-times-repeated speech of the 
Magician, Shakespeare : 

' And like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
* Thecloudcapt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, 



274 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

' The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself, 

* And all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 

* And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, 
' Leave not a wrack behind ; ' 

begin to have some meaning for us? In a word, do we 
at length stand safe in the far region of Poetic Creation 
and Palingenesia, where that Phoenix Death-Birth of 
Human Society, and of all Human Things, appears pos- 
sible, is seen to be inevitable? 

Along this most insufficient, unheard-of Bridge, which 
the Editor, by Heaven's blessing, has now seen himself 
enabled to conclude, if not complete, it cannot be his 
sober calculation, but only his fond hope, that many 
have travelled without accident. No firm arch, over- 
spanning the Impassable with paved highway, could the 
Editor construct; only, as was said, some zigzag series 
of rafts floating tumultuously thereon. Alas, and the 
leaps from raft to raft were too often of a breakneck 
character ; the darkness, the nature of the element, all 
was against us ! 

Nevertheless, may not here and there one of a 
thousand, provided with a discursiveness of intellect rare 
in ouj" day, have cleared the passage, in spite of all ? 
Happy few ! little band of Friends ! be welcome, be of 
courage. By degrees, the eye grows accustomed to its 
new Whereabout ; the hand can stretch itself forth to 
work there : it is in this grand and indeed highest work 
of Palingenesia that ye shall labour, each according to 
ability. New labourers will arrive; new Bridges will be 
built : nay, may not our own poor rope-and-raft Bridge, 
in your passings and repassings, be mended in many a 



CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 275 

point, till it grow Vquite firm, passable even for the 
halt? 

Meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that started 
with us, joyous and full of hope, where now is the innu- 
merable remainder, whom we see no longer by our side ? 
The most have recoiled, and stand gazing afar off, in 
unsympathetic astonishment, at our career : not a few, 
pressing forward with more courage, have missed footing, 
or leaped short ; and now swim weltering in the Chaos- 
flood, some towards this shore, some towards that. To 
these also a helping hand should be held out ; at least 
some word of encouragement be said. 

Or, to speak without metaphor, with which mode of 
utterance Teufelsdrockh unhappily has somewhat in- 
fected us, — can it be hidden from the Editor that many 
a British Reader sits reading quite bewildered in head 
and afflicted rather than instructed by the present Work ? 
Yes, long ago has many a British Reader been, as now, 
demanding with something like a snarl : Whereto does 
all this lead : or what use is in it? 

In the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise 
aiding thy digestive faculty, O British reader, it leads to 
nothing, and there is no use in it ; but rather the reverse, 
for it costs thee somewhat. Nevertheless, if through this 
unpromising Horn-gate, Teufelsdrockh, and we by means 
of him, have led thee into the true Land of Dreams; 
and through the Clothes-Screen, as through a magical 
Pierre-Pertuis, thou lookest, even for moments, into the 
region of the Wonderful, and seest and feelest that thy 
daily life is girt with Wonder, and based on W^onder, 
and thy very blankets and breeches are Miracles, — then 



276 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

art thou profited beyond money^^wortli, and hast a 
thankfulness towards our Professor; nay, perhaps in 
many a literary Tea-circle, wilt open thy kind lips, and 
audibly express that same. 

Nay, farther art not thou too perhaps by this time 
made aware that all Symbols are properly Clothes ; that 
all Forms whereby Spirit manifests itself to Sense, 
whether outwardly or in the imagination, are Clothes; 
and thus not only the parchment Magna Charta, which 
a Tailor was nigh cutting into measures, but the Pomp 
and Authority of Law, the sacredness of Majesty, and all 
inferior Worships (Worth-ships) are properly a Vesture 
and Raiment ; and the Thirty-nine Articles themselves 
are articles of wearing apparel (for the Religious Idea) ? 
In which case, must it not also be admitted that this 
Science of Clothes is a high one, and may with infinitely 
deeper study on thy part yield richer fruit : that it takes 
scientific rank beside Codification, and Political Eco- 
nomy, and the Theory of the British Constitution ; nay, 
rather, from its prophetic height looks down on all these, 
as on so many weaving-shops and spinning-mills, where 
the Vestures which it has to fashion, and consecrate, and 
distribute, are, too often by haggard hungry operatives 
who see no farther than their nose, mechanically woven 
and spun 1 

But omitting all this, much more all that concerns 
Natural Supernaturalism, and indeed whatever has 
reference to the Ulterior or Transcendental Portion of the 
Science, or bears never so remotely on that promised 
Volimie of the Palingenesie der menschlichen Gesell- 
schaft (Newbirth of Society), — we humbly suggest that 
no province of Clothes-Philosophy, even the lowest, is 



CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 277 

without its direct value, but that innumerable inferences 
of a practical nature may be drawn therefrom. To say 
nothing of those pregnant Considerations, ethical, politi- 
cal, symbolical, which crowd on the Clothes-Philosopher 
from the very threshold of his Science : nothing even of 
those ' architectural ideas' which, as we have seen, lurk 
at the bottom of all Modes, and will one day, better un- 
folding themselves, lead to important revolutions, — let 
us glance for a moment, and with the faintest light of 
Clothes-Philosophy, on what may be called the Habila- 
tory Class of our fellow-men. Here too overlooking, 
where so much were to be looked on, the million spinners, 
weavers, fullers, dyers, washers, and wringers, that puddle 
and muddle in their dark recesses, to make us Clothes, 
and die that we may live, — let us but turn the reader's 
attention upon two small divisions of mankind, who, like 
moths, may be regarded as Cloth-animals, creatures that 
live, move and have their being in Cloth : we mean, 
Dandies and Tailors. 

In regard to both which small divisions it may be 
asserted, without scruple, that the public feeling, un- 
enlightened by Philosophy, is at fault j and even that 
the dictates of humanity are violated. As will per- 
haps abundantly appear to readers of the two following 
Chapters. 



25 



278 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER X. 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 



First, touching Dandies, let us consider with some 
scientific strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A Dandy 
is a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office, 
and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every 
faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically 
consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes 
wisely and well : so that as others dress to live, he lives 
to dress. The all-importance of Clothes, which a Ger- 
man Professor, of unequalled learning and acumen, 
writes his enormous Volume to demonstrate, has sprung 
up in the intellect of the Dandy, without effort, like an 
instinct of genius ; he is inspired with Cloth, a Poet of 
Cloth. What Teufelsdrockh would call a * Divine Idea 
of Cloth' is born with him; and this, like other such 
Ideas, will express itself outwardly, or wring his heart 
asunder with unutterable throes. 

But, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fearlessly 
makes his Idea an Action ; shows himself, in peculiar 
guise, to mankind ; walks forth, a witness and living 
Martyr to the eternal Worth of Clothes. We called him 
a Poet : is not his body the (stuffed) parchment-skin 
whereon he writes, with cunning Huddersfield dyes, a 
Sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow? Say, rather, an Epos, 
and Clotha Virumque cano, to the whole world, in 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 279 

Macaronic verses, which he that runs may read. Nay, 
if you grant, what seems to be admissible, that the Dandy 
has a Thinking-principle in liim, and some notions of 
Time and Space, is there not in this Life-devotedness to 
Cloth, in this so willing sacrifice of the Immortal to the 
Perishable, something (though in reverse order) of that 
blending and identification of Eternity with Time, which, 
as we have seen, constitutes the Prophetic character ? 

And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, 
and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in 
return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognise^, 
his existence ; would admit him to be a living object ; or 
even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect 
rays of light. Your silver or your gold (beyond what 
the niggardly Law has already secured him) he solicits 
not ; simply the glance of your eyes. Understand his 
mystic significance, or altogether miss and misinterpret 
it; do but look at him, and he is contented. May we 
not well cry shame on an ungrateful world, that refuses 
even this poor boon ; that will waste its optic faculty on 
dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins ; and over the 
domestic wonderful wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, 
glance with hasty indifference, and a scarcely concealed 
contempt! Him no Zoologist classes among the Mam- 
malia, no Anatomist dissects with care : when did we 
see any injected Preparation of the Dandy, in our Mu- 
seums ; any specimen of him preserved in spirits 1 Lord 
Herringbone may dress himself in a snufF-brown suit, 
with snuff-brown shirt and shoes : it skills not ; the un- 
discerning public, occupied with grosser wants, passes by 
regardless on the other side. 

The age of Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, is indeed. 



280 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

properly speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to sleep : 
for here arises the Clothes-Philosophy to resuscitate, 
strangely enough, both the one and the other ! Should 
sound views of this Science come to prevail, the essential 
nature of the British Dandy, and the mystic significance 
that lies in him, cannot always remain hidden under 
laughable and lamentable hallucination. The following 
long Extract from Professor Teufelsdrockh may set the 
matter, if not in its true light, yet in the way towards 
such. It is to be regretted however that, here as so 
often elsewhere, the Professor's keen philosophic per- 
spicacity is somewhat marred by a certain mixture of 
almost owlish purblindness, or else of some perverse, 
ineffectual, ironic tendency, our readers shall judge 
which : 

' In these distracted times,' writes he, * when the 

* Religious Principle, driven out of most Churches, either 
' lies unseen in the hearts of good men, looking and long- 

* ing and silently working there towards some new Revela- 

* tion ; or else wanders homeless over the world, like a 

* disembodied soul seeking its terrestrial organisation, — 

* into how many strange shapes, of Superstition and 
' Fanaticism, does it not tentatively and errantly cast 
' itself! The higher Enthusiasm of man's nature is for 

* the while without Exponent ; yet must it continue in- 
' destructible, unweariedly active, and work blindly in 

* the great chaotic deep : thus Sect after Sect, and Church 

* after Church, bodies itself forth, and melts again into 

* new metamorphosis. 

* Chiefly is this observable in England, which, as the 

* wealthiest and worst-instructed of European nations, 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 281 

' offers precisely the elements (of Heat namely, and of 

* Darkness), in which such moon-calves and monstrosi- 

* ties are best generated. Among the newer Sects of that 
' country, one of the most notable, and closely connected 
' with our present subject, is that of the Dandies ; con- 

* cerning which, what little information 1 have been able 

* to procure may fitly stand here. 

* It is true, certain of the English Journalists, men 
' generally without sense for the Religious Principle, or 
'judgment for its manifestations, speak, in their brief 

* enigmatic notices, as if this were perhaps rather a 

* Secular Sect, and not a Religious one : nevertheless, to 
' the psychologic eye its devotional and even sacrificial 

* character plainly enough reveals itself. Whether it 

* belongs to the class of Fetish-worships, or of Hero- 

* worships or Polytheisms, or to what other class, may 
' in the present state of our intelligence remain unde- 

* cided (sckweben). A certain touch of Manicheism, 

* not indeed in the Gnostic shape, is discernible enough : 

* also (for human Error walks in a cycle, and reappears 

* at intervals) a not inconsiderable resemblance to that 

* Superstition of the Athos Monks, who by fasting from 

* all nourishment, and looking intensely for a length of 

* time into their own navels, came to discern therein the 

* true Apocalypse of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled. To 

* my own surmise, it appears as if this Dandiacal Sect 

* were but a new modification, adapted to the new time, 

* of that primeval Superstition, Self- Worship ; which 

* Zerdusht, Quangfoutchee, Mohamed, and others, strove 

* rather to subordinate and restrain than to eradicate; 

* and which only in the purer forms of Religion has 

* been altogether rejected. Wherefore, if any one chooses 

25* 



282 SARTOR RESART(JS. 

* to name it revived Ahrimanism, or a new figure of 

* Demon-Worship, I have, so far as is yet visible, no 

* objection. 

* For the rest, these people, animated with the zeal of 

* a new Sect, display courage and perseverance, and 

* what force there is in man's nature though never so 

* enslaved. They affect great purity and separatism : 
' distinguish themselves by a particular costume (whereof 

* some notices were given in the earlier part of this 

* Volume) ; likewise, so far as possible, by a particular 

* speech (apparently some broken Lingua-franca , or 
' English-French) ; and, on the whole, strive to main- 

* tain a true Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves 

* unspotted from the world. 

* They have their Temples, whereof the chief, as the 

* Jewish Temple did, stands in their metropolis ; and is 

* named Almacks, a word of uncertain etymology. They 

* worship principally by night ; and have their High- 

* priests and Highpriestesses, who, however, do not 
' continue for life. The rites, by some supposed to be 

* of the Menadic sort, or perhaps with an Eleusinian or 

* Cabiric character, are held strictly secret. Nor are 
'Sacred Books wanting to the Sect; these they call 

* Fashionable Novels ; however, the Canon is not com- 

* pleted, and some are canonical and others not. 

* Of such Sacred Books I, not without expense, pro- 
' cured myself some samples : and in hope of true in- 

* sight, and with the zeal which beseems an Inquirer 

* into Clothes, set to interpret and study them. But 

* wholly to no purpose : that tough faculty of reading, 

* for which the world will not refuse me credit, was here 

* for the first time foiled and set at nought. In vain 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 283 

* that I summoned my whole energies (?nich weidlick 

* anstrengte), and did my very utmost : at the end of 
' some short space, I was uniformly seized with not so 
' much what I can call a drumming in my ears, as a kind 

* of infinite, unsufferable Jew's-harping and scrannel- 

* piping there ; to which the frightfullest species of 

* Magnetic Sleep soon supervened. And if I strove to 

* shake this away, and absolutely would not yield, came 
' a hitherto unfelt sensation, as of Delirium Tremens^ 

* and a melting into total deliquium : till at last, by 
' order of the Doctor, dreading ruin to my whole intel- 
' lectual and bodily faculties, and a general break ing-up 

* of the constitution, I reluctantly but determinedly 
' forebore. Was there some miracle at work here ; 

* like those Fire-balls, and supernal and infernal pro- 
' digies, that, in the case of the Jewish Mysteries, have 

* also more than once scared back the Alien 1 Be this 

* as it may, such failure on my part, after best efforts, 

* must excuse the imperfection of this sketch ; altogether 
' incomplete, yet the completest I could give of a Sect 

* too singular to be omitted. 

* Loving my own life and senses as I do, no power 

* shall induce me, as a private individual, to open ano- 

* ther Fashionable Novel. ^ But luckily, in this dilemma, 

* comes a hand from the clouds : whereby if not victory, 
' deliverance is held out to me. Round one of those 

* Book-packages, which the iStillschweigen' scJie Buch- 

* handlung is in the habit of importing from England, 

* come, as is usual, various waste prinied-sheets (ma- 

* calatur-hldtter), by way of interior wrappage : into 

* these the Clothes-Philosopher, with a certain Mo- 
' hamedan reverence even for waste paper, where curious 



284 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

' knowledge will sometimes hover, disdains not to cast 

* his eye. Readers may judge of his astonishment when 

* on such a defaced stray sheet, proba-bly the outcast 

* fraction of some English Periodical, such as they name 

* Magazine^ appears something like a Dissertation on 

* this very subject of Fashionable Novels ! It sets out, 

* indeed, chiefly from the Secular point of view ; direct- 

* ing itself, not without asperity, against some to me un- 

* known individual, named JPelham, who seems to be a 

* mystagogue, and leading Teacher and Preacher of the 

* Sect ; so that, what indeed otherwise was not to be ex- 

* pected in such a fugitive fragmentary sheet, the true 

* secret, the Religious physiognomy and physiology of 
' the Dandiacal Body, is nowise laid fully open there. 

* Nevertheless, scattered lights do from time to time 
' sparkle out, whereby I have endeavoured to profit. 

* Nay, in one passage selected from the Prophecies, or 
' Mythic Theogonies, or whatever they are (for the style 

* seems very mixed) of this Mystagogue, I find what ap- 

* pears to be a Confession of Faith, or Whole Duty of 

* Man, according to the tenets of that Sect. Which Con- 

* fession, or whole Duty, therefore, as proceeding from 

* a source so authentic, I shall here arrange under Seven 

* distinct Articles, and in very abridged shape, lay be- 

* fore the German world ; therewith taking leave of this 

* matter. Observe, also, that to avoid possibility of 

* error, I, as far as may be, quote literally from the 

* Original : 

* ARTICLES OP FAITH. 

" 1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about 

* them ; at the same time, wrinkles behind should be 

* carefully avoided. 



THE DANDIACAL BODV. 285 

" 2. The collar is a very important point : it should 
' be low behind, and slightly rolled. 

" 3. No licence of fashion can allow a man of delicate 

* taste to adopt the posterial luxuriance of a Hottentot. 

" 4. There is safety in a swallow-tail. 

" 5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more 
'finely developed than in his rings. 

*' 6, It is permitted to mankind, under certain restric- 
' tions, to wear white waistcoats. 

** 7. The trowsers must be exceedingly tight across 
' the hips." 

'^All which Propositions I, for the present, content 
' myself with modestly but peremptorily and irrevocably 

* denying. 

' In strange contrast with this Dandiacal Body stands 

* another British Sect, originally, as I understand, of 

* Ireland, where its chief seat still is ; but known also in 

* the main Island, and indeed every where rapidly spread- 

* ing. As this Sect has hitherto emitted no Canonical 

* Books, it remains to me in the same state of obscurity 

* as the Dandiacal, which has published Books that the 

* unassisted human faculties are inadequate to read. 

* The members appear to be designated by a considerable 

* diversity of names, according to their various places of 

* establishment : in England they are generally called 
' the Drudge Sect ; also, unphiiosophically enough, the 

* White Negroes ; and, chiefly in scorn by tiiose of 

* other communions, the Ragged-Beggar Sect. In 
' Scotland, again, I find them entitled Hallanshakers, or 
' the Stook-of'Duds Sect ; any individual communicant 
' is named Stook-of-Duds (that is, Shock of Rags), in 



286 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

allusion, doubtless, to their professional Costume. 
While in Ireland, which, as mentioned, is their grand 
parent hive, they go by a perplexing multiplicity of 
designations, such as Bngfrotters, Redshanks, Ribbon- 
men, Cottiers, Peep-of-Day Boys, Babes of the Wood, 
Rockites, Poor-Slaves; which last, however, seems to 
be the primary and generic name ; whereto, probably 
enough, the others are only subsidiary species, or slight 
varieties ; or, at most, propagated offsets from the 
parent stem, whose minute subdivisions, and shades 
of difference, it were here loss of time to dwell on. 
Enough for us to understand, what seems indubitable, 
that the original Sect is that of the Poor-Slaves ; 
whose doctrines, practices, and fundamental character- 
istics, pervade and animate the whole Body, howsoever 
denominated or outwardly diversified. 

* The precise speculative tenets of this Brotherhood : 
how the Universe, and Man, and Man's Life, picture 
themselves to the mind of an Irish Poor-Slave ; with 
what feelings and opinions he looks forward on the 
Future, round on the Present, back on the Past, it were 
extremely difficult to specify. Something Monastic 
there appears to be in their Constitution : we find them 
bound by the two Monastic Vows, of Poverty and 
Obedience ; which Vows, especially the former, it is 
said, they observe with great strictness ; nay, as I have 
understood it, they are pledged, and be it by any so- 
lemn Nazarene ordination or not, irrevocably enough 
consecrated thereto, even before birth. That the third 
Monastic Vow, of Chastity, is rigidly enforced among 
them, I find no ground to conjecture. 

* Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandiacal 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 287 

* Sect in iheir grand principle of wearing a peculiar 

* Costume. Of which Irish Poor-Slave Costume uo 

* description will indeed be found in the present Volume; 

* for "this reason, that by the imperfect organ of Lan- 

* guage it did not seem describable. Their raiment 
' consists of innumerable skirts, lappets, and irregular 

* wings, of all cloths and of all colours ; through the 

* labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are in- 

* troduced by some unknown process. It is fastened 

* together by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums, 
' and skewers ; to which frequently is added a girdle of 

* leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the 

* loins. To straw rope, indeed, they seem partial, and 

* often wear it by way of sandals. In head-dress they 

* affect a certain freedom : hats with partial brim, with- 

* out crown, or with only a loose, hinged, or valve crown ; 

* in the former case, they sometimes invert the hat, and 

* wear it brim uppermost, like a University-cap, with 

* what view is unknown. 

* The name, Poor-Slaves, seems to indicate a Slavonic, 

* Polish, or Russian origin : not so, however, the in- 

* terior essence and spirit of their Superstition, which 
' rather displays a Teutonic or Druidical character. One 

* might fancy them worshippers of Hertha, or the Earth : 

* for they dig and affectionately work continually in her 

* bosom; or else, shut up in private Oratories, meditate 

* and manipulate the substances derived from her; sel- 

* dom looking up towards the Heavenly Luminaries, and 
' then with comparative indifference. Like the Druids, 
'on the other hand, they live in dark dwellings; often 

* even breaking their glass-windows, where they find 

* such, and stuffing them up with pieces of raiment, or 



288 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Other opaque substances, till the fit obscurity is restored. 
Again, like all followers of Nature-Worship, they are 
liable to out-breakings of an enthusiasm rising to fe- 
rocity ; and burn men, if not in wicker idols, yet in 
sod cottages. 

* In respect of diet, they have also their observances. 
All Poor-Slaves are Rhizophagous (or Root-eaters) ; a 
few are Ichthyophagous, and use Salted Herrings : 
other animal food they abstain from ; except indeed, 
with perhaps some strange inverted fragment of a 
Brahminical feeling, such animals as die a natural 
death. Their universal sustenance is the root named 
Potato, cooked by fire alone ; and generally without 
condiment or relish of any kind, save an unknown con- 
diment named Point, into the meaning of which I have 
vainly inquired ; the victual Potatoes-and- Point not 
appearing, at least not with specific accuracy of descrip- 
tion, in any European Cookery-Book whatever. For 
drink they use, with an almost epigrammatic counter- 
poise of taste. Milk, which is the mildest of liquors, 
and Potheen which is the fiercest. This latter I have 
tasted, as well as the English Blue-Ruin, and the 
Scotch Whisky, analogous fluids used by the Sect in 
those countries : it evidently contains some form of 
alcohol, in the highest state of concentration, though 
disguised with acrid oils ; and is, on the whole, the 
most pungent substance known to me, — indeed, a per- 
fect liquid fire. In all their Religious Solemnities, 
Potheen is said to be an indispensable requisite, and 
largely consumed. 

* An Irish Traveller, of perhaps common veracity, who 
presents himself under the to me unmeaning title of 



t:'He dandiacal body. 289 

' The late John Bernard^ offers the following sketch of a 

* domestic establishment, the inmates whereof, though 

* such is not stated expressly, appear to have been of 

* that Faith. Thereby shall my German readers now 
behold an Irish Poor-Slave, as it were with their own 
eyes ; and even see him at meat. Moreover, in the so 
precious waste-paper sheet, above mentioned, 1 have 
found some corresponding picture of a Dandiacal 
Household, painted by that same Dandiacal Mystagogue, 
or Theogonist : this, also, by way of counterpart and 
contrast, the world shall look into. 

* First, therefore, of the Poor-Slave, who appears like- 
wise to have been a s[>ecies of Innkeeper. I quote 
from the original : " The furniture of this Caravansera 
consisted of a large iron Pot, two oaken Tables, two 
Benches, two Chairs, and a Potheen Noggin. There 
was a Loft above (attainable by a ladder), upon which 
the inmates" slept ; and the space below was divided by 
a hurdle into two Apartments ; the one for their cow 
and pig, the other for themselves and guests. On 
entering the house we discovered the family, eleven in 
number, at dinner : the father sitting at the top, the 
mother at bottom, the children on each side of a larfje 
oaken Board which was scooped out in the middle, 
like a Trough, to receive the contents of their Pot of* 
Potatoes. Little holes were cut at equal distances to 
contain Salt ; and a bowl of Milk stood on the table : 
all the luxuries of meat and beer, bread, knives, and 
dishes were dispensed with," The Poor Slave himself 
our Traveller found, as he says, broad-backed, black- 
browed, of great personal strength, and mouth from ear 
to ear. His Wife was a sun-browned but well-featured 
26 



290 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* woman ; and his young ones, bare and chubby, had 

* the appetite of ravens. Of their Philosophical, or Re- 

* ligious tenets or observances, no notice or hint. 

* But now, secondly, of the Dandiacal Household ; in 

* which, truly, that often-mentioned Mystagogue and 

* inspired Penman himself has his abode : *' A Dressing- 

* room splendidly furnished ; violet-coloured curtains, 

* chairs and ottomans of the same hue. Two full-length 

* Mirrors are placed, one on each side of a table, which 

* supports the luxuries of the Toilet. Several Bottles of 

* Perfumes, arranged in a peculiar fashion, stand upon 

* a smaller table of mother-of-pearl : opposite to these 

* are placed the appurtenances of Lavation richly wrought 

* in frosted silver. A Wardrobe of Buhl is on the left ; 

* the doors of which being partly open discover a pro- 

* fusion of Clothes ; Shoes of a singularly small size 

* monopolise the lower shelves. Fronting the wardrobe 

* a door ajar gives some slight glimpse of a Bath-room. 

* Folding-doors in the back-ground. — Enter the Author," 

* our Theogonist in person, *' obsequiously preceded by 

* a French Valet, in white silk Jacket and cambric 

* Apron." 

' Such are the two Sects, which, at this moment, 

* divide the more unsettled portion of the British People ; 

* and agitate that ever-vexed country. To the eye of 

* the political Seer, their mutual relation, pregnant with 

* the elements of discord and hostility, is far from con- 

* soling. These two principles of Dandiacal Self-wor- 

* ship or Demon-worship, and Poor-Slavish or Drudgical 

* Earth-worship, or whatever that same Drudgism may 

* be, do as yet indeed manifest themselves under distant 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 291 

* and nowise considerable shapes : nevertheless, in their 

* roots and subterranean ramifications, they extend 
' through the entire structure of Society, and work un- 
' weariedly in the secret depths of English national 

* Existence ; striving to separate and isolate it into two 

* contradictory, uncommunicating masses. 

' In numbers, and even individual strength, the Poor- 

* Slaves or Drudges, it would seem, are hourly increasing. 

* The Dandiacal, again, is by nature no proselytising 

* Sect ; but it boasts of great hereditary resources, and 

* is strong by union : whereas the Drudges, split into 

* parties, have as yet no rallying-point ; or at best, only 
' co-operate by means of partial secret affiliations. If, 

* indeed, there were to arise a Communion of Drudges, 

* as there is already a Communion of Saints, what 
' strangest effects would follow therefrom ! Dandyism 
' as yet affects to look down on Drudgism : but perhaps 

* the hour of trial, when it will be practically seen which 
' ought to look down, and which up, is not so distant. 

* To me it seems probable that the two Sects will one 

* day part England between them ; each recruiting itself 

* from the intermediate ranks, till there be none left to 

* enlist on either side. Those Dandiacal Manicheans, 

* with the host of Dandyising Christians, will form one 

* body : the Drudges, gathering round them whosoever 

* is Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel Pagan ; sweep- 
' ing up likewise all manner of Utilitarians, Radicals, 

* refractory Potwallopers, and so forth, into their general 

* mass, will form another. I could liken Dandyism and 
' Drudgism to two bottomless boiling Whirlpools that 

* had broken out on opposite quarters of the firm land : 

* as yet they appear only disquieted, foolishly bubbling 



292 SARTOR KESARTDSV 

' wells, which man's art might cover in ; yet mark therrr, 
'their diameter is daily widening; they are hollow 

* Cones that boil up from the infinite Deep, over which 

* your firm land is but a thin crust or rind \- Thus daily 

* is the intermediate land crumbling in, daily the empire 

* of the two Buchan-Bullers extending ; till now there is 
' but a foot-plank, a mere film of Land between them ; 

* this too is washed away ; and then — we have the true 

* Hell of Waters, and Noah's Deluge i& otttdeiuged ! 

*' Or better, I mjght call them two boundless, and^ 

* indeed unexampled Electric Machines (turn-ed by the 

* " Machinery of Society"), with batteries of opposite 

* quality ; Drudgism the Negative, Dandyism the Posi- 

* tive : one attracts hourly towards it and appropriates 

* all the Positive Electricity of the Nation (namely, the 
' Money thereof) ; the other is equally busy with the 

* Negative (that is to say the Hunger), which is equally 

* potent. Hitherto you see only partial transient 

* sparkles and sputters : but wait a little, till the entire 
'nation is in an electric state; tiH your whole vital 

* Electricity, no longer healthfully Neutral, is cut into 

* two isolated portions of Positive and Negative (of 
' Money and of Hunger) ; and stan>ds there bottled up- 

* in two World Batteries! The stirring of a child's 

* finger brings the two together ; and then — What then 1' 

* The Earth is but shivered into impalpable smoke by 
' that Doom's-thunderpeal ; the Sun misses one of his 

* Planets in Space, and thenceforth there are no eclipses 
*of the, Moon. — Or better still, I might liken' 

Oh ! enough, enough of likenings and similitudes; in 
excess of which, truly, it is hard to say whether Teufels- 
drockh or ouiselves sin the more. 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 293 

We have often blamed him for a habit of wire-draw- 
ing and over-refining ; from of old we have been familiar 
with his tendency to Mysticism and Religiosity, whereby 
in every thing he was still scenting out Religion : but 
never perhaps did these amaurosis suffusions so cloud 
and distort his otherwise most piercing vision, as in this 
of the Dandiacal Body ! Or was there something of 
intended satire ; is the Professor and Seer not quite the 
blinkard he affects to be? Of an ordinary mortal we 
should have decisively answered in the affirmative ; but 
with a Teufelsdrockh there ever hovers some shade of 
doubt. In the meanwhile, if satire were actually in- 
tended, the case is little better. There are not wanting 
men who will answer : Does your Professor take us for 
simpletons? His irony has overshot itself; we see 
through it, and perhaps through him. 



294 SAETOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER XI. 



TAILORS. 



Thus^ however, has our first Practical Inference from 
the Clothes-Philosophy, that which respects Dandies, 
been sufficiently drawn ; and we come now to the second, 
concerning Tailors. On this latter our opinion happily 
quite coincides with that of Teufelsdrockh himself, as 
expressed in the concluding page of his Volume ; to 
whom therefore we willingly give place. Let him speak 
his own last words, in his own way : 

' Upwards of a century,' says he, ' must elapse, and 

* still the bleeding fight of Freedom be fought, whoso is 
' noblest perishing in the van, and thrones be hurled on. 
' altars like Pelion on Ossa, and the Moloch of Iniquity 

* have his victims, and the Michael of Justice his mar- 

* tyrs, before Tailors can be admitted to their true pre- 
' rogatives of manhood, and this last wound of suffering 

* Humanity be closed. 

' If aught in the history of the world's blindness 

* could surprise us, here might we indeed pause and 
' wonder. An idea has gone abroad, and fixed itself 

* down into a wide-spreading rooted error, that Tailors 
' are a distinct species in Physiology, not Men, but 
*^ fractional Parts of a Man. Call any one a Schneider 



TAlLOflS. 295 

' (Cutter, Tailor), is it not, in our dislocated, hood- 
' winked, and indeed delirious condition of Society, equi- 
' valent to defying his perpetual fellest enmity? The 

* epithet Schneidermdssig (Tailorlike) betokens an other- 

* wise unapproachable degree of pusillanimity : we in- 
' troduce a Tailor's Melaficholi^^ more opprobrious than 

* any Leprosy, into our Books of Medicine ; and fable 

* I know not what of his generating it by living on 
' Cabbage. Why should 1 speak of Hans Sachs (him- 

* self a Shoemaker, or kind of Leather-Tailor), with his 
*^ Schneider mit dem Panier?: Why of Shakespeare, in 
' his Taming of the Shrew, an=d elsewhere ? Does it 
*■ not stand on record that the English Queen Elizabeth^ 
' receiving a deputation of Eighteen Tailors, addressed 
*^ them with, a " Good morning, gentlemen both I" Did 

* not the same virago boast that she had a Cavalry Regi- 
' ment, whereof neither horse nor man could be injured : 

* her Regiment, namely, of Tailors on Mares ? Thus 

* everywhere is the falsehood taken for granted, and 

* acted on as an indisputable fact. 

' Nevertheless, need I put the question to any Phy- 

* siologist. Whether it is disputable or not t Seems it 

* not at lea&t presumable, that, under his Clothes, the 

* Tailor has bones, and viscera,, and other muscles than 
' the sartorius ? Which function of manhood is the 

* Tailor not conjectured to perform I Can he not arrest 

* for Debt? Is he not in most countries a tax-paying 

* animal? 

' To no reader o.f this Volume can it be doubtful 

* which conviction is mine. Nay, if the fruit of these 
' long vigilsj^ and almost preternatural Inquiries is not 



296 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

* to perish utterly, the world will have approximated 

* towards a higher Truth ; and the doctrine, which 

* Swift, with the keen forecast of genius, dimly antici- 

* pated, will stand revealed in clear light : that the 
' Tailor is not only a Man, but something of a Creator 

* or Divinity. Of Franklin it was said, that ** he 

* snatched the Thunder from Heaven and the Sceptre 

* from Kings:" but which is greater, I would ask, he 
' that lends, or he that snatches ? For, looking away 

* from individual cases, and how a Man is by the Tailor 

* new created into a Nobleman, and clothed not only 

* with Wool but with Dignity and a Mystic Dominion, 
* — is not the fair fabric of Society itself, with all its 

* royal mantles and pontifical stoles, whereby, from 

* nakedness and dismemberment, we are organised into 
' Polities, into Nations, and a whole co-operating Man- 

* kind, the creation, as has here been often irrefragably 

* evinced, of the Tailor alone ? — What too are all Poets, 

* and moral Teachers, but a species of Metaphorical 

* Tailors ? Touching which high Guild the greatest 

* living Guild-Brother has triumphantly asked us : 

* " Nay, if thou wilt have it, who but the Poet first 

* made Gods for men ; brought them down to us ; and 

* raised us up to them 1 " 

* And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the hard 

* basis of his Shopboard, the world treats with contumely, 

* as the ninth part of a man ! Look up, thou much in- 

* jured one, look up with the kindling eye of hope, and 
' prophetic bodings of a noble better time. Too long 

* hast thou sat there, on crossed legs, wearing thy ancle- 
' joints to horn ; like some sacred Anchorite, or Catholic 



TAILORS. 297 

* Fakir, doing penance, drawing down Heaven's richest 

* blessings, for a world that scoffed at thee. Be of hope f 
' Already streaks of blue peer through our clouds ; the 

* thick gloom of Ignorance is rolling asunder, and it will 
' be Day. Mankind will repay with interest their long- 
'accumulated debt: the Anchorite that was scoffed at 
' Will be worshipped ; the Fraction will become not an 
^' Integer only, but a Square and Cube. With astonish- 
^'ment the world will recognise that the Tailor is its 

* Hierophant, and Hierarch, or even its God. 

' Ab I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked 
' upon these Four-and-Twenty Tailors, sewing and em- 
' broidering that rich Cloth, which the Sultan sends 
^' yearly for the Caaba of Mecca, I thought within myself: 
' How many other Unholies has your covering Art made 

* holy, besides this Arabian Whinstone ! 

' Still more touching was it when, turning the corner 

* of a lane, in the Scottish Town of Edinburgh, I came 
' upon a Signpost, whereon stood written that such and 
' such a one was " Breeches-Maker to his Majesty ; " and 
' stood painted the Effigiesof a Pair of Leather Breeches, 

* and between the knees these memorable words. Sic' 

* iTUR AD ASTRA. Was not this the martyr prison- 
' speech of a Tailor sighing indeed in bonds, yet sighing 
' towards deliverance ; and prophetically appealing to a 
' better day ? A day of justice, when the worth of 
' Breeches would be revealed to man, and the Scissors 

* become for ever venerable. 

* Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his appeal 
' been altogether in vain. It was in this high moment 
' when the soul, rent, as it were, and shed asunder, il 



298 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

' open to inspiring influence, that I first conceived this 

* Work on Clothes ; the greatest I can ever hope to do ; 

* which has already, after long retardations, occupied, 

* and will yet occupy, so large a section of my Life ;, and 
' of which the Primary and simpler Portion may here 
' find its conclusion.' 



FAREWELL, 299 



CHAPTER XI I. 



FAREWELL. 



So have we endeavoured, from the enormous, amorphous 
Plumpudding, more like a Scottish Haggis, which Herr 
Teufelsdrockh had kneaded for his fellow mortals, to 
pick out the choicest Plums, and present them separately 
on a cover of our own. A laborious, perhaps a thank- 
less enterprise ; in which, however, something of hope 
has occasionally cheered us, and of which we can now 
wash our hands not altogether without satisfaction. If 
hereby, though in barbaric wise, some morsel of spiritual 
nourishment have been added to the scanty ration of our 
beloved British world, what nobler recompense could the 
Editor desire? If it prove otherwise, why should he 
murmur? Was not this a Task which Destiny, in any 
case, had appointed him; which having now done with, 
he sees his general Day's-work so much the lighter, so 
much the shorter ? 

Of Professor Teufelsdrockh it seems impossible to 
take leave without a mingled feeling of astonishment, 
gratitude and disapproval. Who will not regret that 
talents, which might have profited in the higher walks 
of Philosophy, or in Art itself, have been so much de- 
voted to a rummaging among lumber-rooms; nay, too 
often to a scraping in kennels, where lost rings and 



300 SARTOR REvSAIiTUS. 

diamond-necklaces are nowise the sole conquests 1 Re- 
gret is unavoidable j yet censure were loss of time. To 
cure him of his mad humours British Criticism would 
essay in vain : enough for her if she can, by vigilance, 
prevent the spreading of such among ourselves. What 
a result, should this piebald, entangled, hyper-meta- 
phorical style of writing, not to say of thinking, become 
general among our Literary men i As it might so easily 
do. Thus has not the Editor himself, working over 
Teufelsdrockh's German, lost much of his own English 
purity 1 Even as the smaller whirlpool is sucked into 
the larger, and made to whirl along with it, so must the 
lesser mind, in this instance, become portion of the 
greater, and, like it, see all things figuratively : which 
habit time and assiduous effort will be needed to 
eradicate. 

Nevertheless, wayward as our Professor shows him- 
self, is there any reader that can part with him in de- 
clared enmity 1 Let us confess, there is that in the wild, 
much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which almost at- 
taches us. His attitude, we will hope and believe, is 
that of a man who had said to Cant, Begone ; and to 
Dilettantism, Here thou canst not be ; and to Truth, Be 
thou in place of all to me : a man who had manfully defied 
the * Time-Prince,' or Devil, to his face; nay, perhaps, 
Hannibal-like, was mysteriously consecrated from birth 
to that warfare, and now stood minded to wage the 
same, by all weapons, in all places, at all times. In 
such a cause, any soldier, were he but a Polack Scythe- 
man, shall be welcome. 

Still the question returns on us : How could a man 
occasionally of keen insight, not without keen sense of 



FAREWELL. 301 

propriety, who had real Thoughts to communicate, resolve 
to emit them in a shape bordering so closely on the 
absurd ? Which question he were wiser than the present 
Editor who should satisfactorily answer. Our conjecture 
has sometimes been that perhaps Necessity as well as 
Choice was concerned in it. Seems it not conceivable 
that, in a Life like our Professor's, where so much 
bountifully given by Nature had in Practice failed and 
misgone, Literature also would never rightly prosper : 
that striving with his characteristic vehemence to paint 
this and the other Picture, and ever without success, he 
at last desperately dashes his sponge, full of all colours, 
against the canvass, to try whether it will paint Foam ? 
With all his stillness, there were perhaps in Teufels- 
drockh desperation enough for this. 

A second conjecture we hazard with even less war- 
ranty. It is that Teufelsdrockh is not without some 
touch of the universal feeling, a wish to proselytise. 
How often already have we paused, uncertain whether 
the basis of this so enigmatic nature were really Stoicism 
and Despair, or Love and Hope only seared into the 
figure of these ! Remarkable, moreover, is this saying 
of his : * How were Friendship possible ? In mutual 

* devoted ness to the Good and True : otherwise impos- 

* sible ; except as Armed Neutrality, or hollow Commer- 
' cial League. A man, be the Heavens ever praised, is 
' sufficient for himself; yet were ten men, united in Love, 
' capable of being and of doing what ten thousand singly 
' would fail in. Infinite is the help man can yield to 
' man.' And now in conjunction therewith consider this 
other : ' It is the Night of the World, and still long till 
' it be Day : we wander amid the glimmer of smoking 

2/ 



302 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

'ruins, and the Sun and the Stars of Heaven are as 

* blotted out for a season ; and two immeasurable Fan- 

* toms, Hypocrisy and Atheism, with the Gowle, Sensu- 
' ALiTY, stalk abroad over the Earth, and call it theirs : 
' well at ease are the Sleepers for whom Existence is a 

* shallow Dream.' 

But what of the awestruck Wakeful who find it a 
Reality I Should not these unite; since even an authentic 
Spectre is not visible to Two?— In which case were this 
enormous Clothes- Volume properly an enormous Pitch- 
pan, which our Teufelsdrockh in his lone watchtower 
had kindled, that it might flame far and wide through 
the Night, and many a disconsolately wandering spirit 
be guided thither to a Brother's bosom ! — We say as 
before, with all his malign indifference, who knows 
what mad Hopes this man may harbour? 

Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here, which 
harmonises ill with such conjecture ; and, indeed, were 
Teufelsdrockh made like other men, might as good as 
altogether subvert it. Namely, that while the Beacon- 
fire blazed its brightest, the Watchman had quitted it ; 
that no pilgrim could now ask him : Watchman, what of 
the Night? Professor Teufelsdrockh, be it known, is 
no longer visibly present at Weissnichtwo, but again to 
all appearance lost in Space 1 Some time ago, the 
Hofrath Heuschrecke was pleased to favour us with an- 
other copious Epistle ; wherein much is said about the 
' Population-Institute ; ' nmch repeated in praise of the 
Paperbag Documents, the hieroglyphic nature of which 
our Hofrath still seems not to have surmised ; and, 
lastly, the strangest occurrence communicated, to us for 
the first time, in the following paragrapii : 



FAREWELL. 303 

* Ew. fVohlgebohren will have seen, from the public 
Prints, with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless 
solicitude Weissnichtwo regards the disappearance of 
her Sage. Might but the united voice of Germany 
prevail on him to return ; nay, could we but so much 
as elucidate for ourselves by whut mystery he went 
away ! But, alas, old Leischen experiences or affects 
the profoundest deafness, the }>rofoundest ignor^^^ : in 
the Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed c^^ the 
Privy Council itself can hitherto elicit no ansv\^er. 

* It had been remarked that while the agitating news 
of those Parisian Three Days flew from mouth to 
mouth, and dinned every ear in Weissnichtwo, Herr 
Teufelsdrockh was not known, at the Ganse or else- 
where, to have spoken, for a whole week, any syllable 
except once these three : Es geht an (It is beginning). 
Shortly after, as Ew. Wohlgebohren knows, was the 
public tranquillity here, as in Berlin, threatened by a 
Sedition of the Tailors. Nor did there want Evil- 
wishers, or perhaps mere desperate Alarmists, who 
asserted that the closing Chapter of the Clothes-Volume 
was to blame. In this appalling crisis, the serenity of 
our Philosopher was indescribable : nay, perhaps, 
through one humble individual, something thereof 
might pass into the Rath (Council) itself, and so con- 
tribute to the country's deliverance. The Tailors are 
now entirely paciiicated. — To neither of these two inci- 
dents can 1 attribute our loss : yet still comes there the 
shadow of a suspicion out of Paris and its Politics. 
For example, when the Saijit-Simonian Society trans- 
mitted its Propositions iiither, and the whole Ganse 
was one vast cackle of laughter, lamentation, and asto- 



304 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

nishment, our Sage sat mute; and at the end of the 
third evening, said merely : " Here also are men who 
have discovered, not without amazement, that Man is 
still Man ; of which high, long-forgotten Truth you 
already see them make a false application." Since 
then, as has been ascertained by examination of the 
Post-Director, there passed at least one Letter with its 
Ansuj^ between the Messieurs Bazard-Enfantin and 
our^ffolessor himself; of what tenor can now only be 
conjectured. On the fifth night following, he was seen 
for the last time ! 

' Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of 
the hostile Sects that convulse our Era, been spirited 
away by certain of their emissaries ; or did he go forth 
voluntarily to their head-quarters to confer with them, 
and confront them ? Reason we have, at least of a nega- 
tive sort, to believe the Lost still living: our widowed 
Heart also whispers that ere long he will himself 
give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, must his archives, one 
day, be opened by Authority ; where much, perhaps 
the Palingenesie itself, is thought to be reposited.' 

Thus far the Hofrath ; who vanishes, as is his wont, 
too like an Ignis Fatuus, leaving the dark still darker. 

So that Teufelsdrockh's public History were not done 
then, or reduced to an even, unromantic tenor ; nay, per- 
haps, the better part thereof were only beginning? We 
stand in a region of conjectures, where substance has 
melted into shadow, and one cannot be distinguished 
from the other. May Time, which solves or suppresses 
all problems, throw glad light on this also. Our own 
private conjecture, now amounting almost to certainty, is 



FAREWELL. 



305 



that, safe-mooreci in some stillest obscurity, not to lie 
always still, Teufelsdrockh is actually in London 1 

Here, however, can the present Editor, with an 
ambrosial joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, lay 
down his pen. Well does he know, if human testimony 
be worth aught, that to innumerable British readers 
likewise, this is a satisfying consummation ; that innu- 
merable British readers consider him, during yum cur- 
rent months, but as an uneasy interruption^ia their 
ways of thought and digestion, not without a certain 
irritancy and even spoken invective. For which, as for 
other mercies, ought he not to thank the Upper Powers? 
To one and all of you, O irritated readers, he, with out- 
stretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. 
Thou too, miraculous Entity, that namest thyself Yorke 
and Oliver, and with thy vivacities and genialities, 
with thy ail-too Irish mirth and madness, and odour of 
palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell ; long 
as thou canst, fare-well! Have we not, in the course 
of Eternity, travelled some months of our Life-journey in 
partial sight of one another ; have we not lived together, 
though in a state of quarrel ? 



THE END. 



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